


To Take A Chance Again

by AngeNoir



Series: In the Future, Things Get Better (and yet remain the same) [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/F, F/M, Harassment, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Stalking, Tony doesn't know how to do normal relationships, Unhealthy Relationship (in the beginning), bad relationship start, post-nuclear apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the radioactive wars, citizens live in cities walled off and covered by a shield to prevent radiation from coming into the city. For most of his life, Steve Rogers has lived in New York City, but when his best friend needs an expensive piece of medical equipment, Steve helps pay for it and looks for a job in a smaller city where rent and expenses would be less.</p><p>He finds a small city in Catskill, and is greeted by a small enough population that everyone knew everyone else’s business. It’s slightly startling and strange – especially when his coworkers try, on his first day at work, to set him up with Tony Stark.</p><p>Tony Stark, who is a member of the aristocracy, has been hiding away from the world, dealing with kids and giving his patronage to this small town so long as he doesn’t need to interact with the rest of the world. No one knows what happened to him during his kidnapping and he isn’t about to tell anyone. But when a former flame sends Steve Rogers to his door, he’s captivated – and he pursues Steve, even when it becomes clear that there is a specter haunting Steve’s past. Tony’s determined to show Steve that it’s alright to trust again, and in turn helps himself on the path back into the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Take A Chance Again

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely Spiderwardo made a fanmix for this work! You can find it [here](http://spiderwardo.tumblr.com/post/47977228450/a-fanmix-for-to-take-a-chance-again-by-angenoir). Thank you so much!
> 
> This is part of the Harlequin Big Bang, found [here](http://harlequinbbang.livejournal.com)!
> 
> Some terms used in the story are defined in the end-notes, but I did my best to make everything self-explanatory. This is based off of a romance novel's summary (the book is called [Edge of Forever](http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=25932&cid=228)) but I have not read the book - just worked off of the summary.
> 
> That being said, I never realized how creepy it must be to have a suitor keep giving you gifts and everyone telling you that you two should be together until I wrote this. So. I tried to mitigate it, but this does have elements of a persistent suitor who doesn't take 'no' as an initial answer. If that needs to go in the triggers/warnings/tags, **_please_** let me know - I'd rather over-tag than under-tag, if that's even an expression.
> 
> EDIT: I have tagged this as stalking, harassment, and an unhealthy relationship in the beginning. I hope that covers it all. Also, selected terminology can be found in the end notes.

A faint ringing noise sounded through the half-furnished apartment. Boxes were stacked neatly and precisely in each appropriate room, and even then, there were still a few extra boxes lying here and there. Enough so that, as Steve searched frantically for the old comm unit (must have fallen out of his pocket as he moved the boxes up the tube and into his new apartment), his foot caught on the open flap of one and he went sprawling.

The ringing noise ended.

“Shit,” Steve sighed, and gingerly sat up, rubbing his elbow and shoulder.

The ringing noise started up again.

Steve jumped up and waded through the boxes again, searching vainly for the menace. Finally, just as the ringing noise fell silent, Steve located the unit, dropped in the box labeled ‘Kitchenware – Small Appliances.’

He keyed in the access code to the call log, noting the two missed communications. As he double-tapped on the most recent to return the communication, the comm unit began vibrating and ringing in his hand. With a sigh, he canceled his previous communication and accepted the incoming.

“What the hell, man, you move away and then forget all about us?”

“Clint, I just got into my new apartment. I dropped my comm. What could you possibly need, though?”

“I thought I was supposed to come over, right? Help you unpack?”

Steve frowned at the phone as if Clint could see it. “Clint, I’m two hours away. You can’t just ‘come over’ and help me unpack, not on a workday.”

“Actually, you’re more of a ‘look-out-your-window-and-wave’ away.”

Steve valiantly fought the urge to bang his head against the wall and instead resigned himself to his fate. “If you’re already here, why don’t you come up?”

“Well. Funny thing that. Could you come down and help me carry something up?”

Groaning, Steve looked at the boxes littering his floors. “Clint, just today, I packed up a rental craft, drove for two hours, and unloaded it myself. What more could I possibly want to carry?”

“C’mon, Steve, help a buddy out!”

With a sigh, Steve rubbed his face. “Fine, alright. I’ll be right down.”

Shoving his comm unit into his back pocket, he looked around at the boxes and sighed again before making his way out of the apartment and over to the tube. The only plus side was that this far from any major cities, there weren’t enough people to justify more than nine stories; in New York City, where’d he lived for his entire life until literally that morning, he’d lived on the forty-eighth floor and tube rides could be as long as ten minutes if everyone was trying to get in one. Once down, he looked around the miniscule hover-lot for Clint’s beat-up craft. It was an ancient model, not streamlined like the newer ones. Built like the disc they had been modeled on, rounded bottle top with the radioactive shields to protect the occupants, the older models were prepared in case that radiation leaked through the city shields, people could take shelter in their cars and move to a functioning, shielded city. As the city shields became more and more sophisticated, and the fear of radiation entering the city grew smaller and smaller, more recent craft-vehicles were streamlined, rounded rectangular items with increased maneuverability but lowered shielding. However, Clint’s craft was nowhere in sight and Steve frowned, narrowing his eyes and wondering whether he’d just been pranked.

“Rogers!”

Steve’s breath caught in his throat, and he turned to see not Clint’s old craft, but Bucky’s heavy-craft, practically a moving-craft in its own right, Clint’s head hanging out the driver’s port, blond hair flopping into blue eyes. Steve broke into a run, weaving through the parked crafts as Clint waved wildly, and when Steve got to the craft he bypassed Clint entirely to move to the passenger side.

Sure enough, there sat Bucky, black hair limp against his skin, brown eyes tired, and pale as anything but looking just as wildly happy as Steve felt. “You fat lug, what do you think you’re doing, moving away without me?” Bucky demanded.

“Bucky, why the hell aren’t you in the hospital?” Steve demanded even as he opened Bucky’s door and grabbed him in a careful hug. The newly-retired soldier wrapped his right arm around Steve’s shoulders – his left arm was gone from shoulder down.

“Couldn’t let you move out to the sticks by yourself!” Bucky said easily. “Clint had time off, still, and agreed to take me up to you. Two hours out of the city. You’re practically in Canada!”

Steve laughed. “Only you would compare rural New York to Canada, you Texan.” Even though Bucky was joking and laughing, Steve watched with worried eyes as he moved, wincing, constantly shifting as if looking for his missing limb. It was too soon for him to be discharged from the hospital, and Steve wondered why he’d _really_ come upstate to the tiny town of Catskill, New York. Certainly Bucky’s line of credit hadn’t run out? He’d been an Imperial Soldier, and say what you wanted about the army – most people did, nowadays – the Empire took care of its soldiers. No, something else had to have—

A dark cloud passed over Steve’s face, and Bucky sighed. “Yup, there it is. Old man Rogers.”

“Really? They set you out because of your class?”

“Do I not rate a hello, even?” Clint grumbled, and Steve turned to see Clint there, leaning on the front of the craft. His eyes were guarded; anger burning hotly at the way Bucky had been treated. The three of them were closer than normal, for all that they came from different regions.

It took Steve an effort to bite back his rage and instead motion to the tall building. “I’m on the seventh floor, apartment F.”

Clint moved forward to help Bucky out. Even with all the pain he must have been in, Bucky still moved easily and with a hint of menace that was hard to hide. Bucky was born to one of the Black Widows, the assassin class of the High Imperials. The aristocracy of the Empire hated to be reminded of the once-secret police of the Empire, and shunned those of the Black Widow class and their offspring. The commoners, who never left Earth and knew only superstition, were convinced that all Black Widows made deals with the devil and their children were demonspawn. Clint, Steve, and Bucky had grown up in the same ward-cohort; Steve’s mother had died and his father was unknown, Bucky’s mother had given him up at the age of six when her unit moved from Texas to New York City, and Clint had been abandoned by his older brother to the local government at the tender age of five, after his older brother had taken him halfway across the continent. Instead of going to the general cohort-schools, they went to the state-supported schools, forever outcasts due to the black W printed on their identification. Steve, for all that he was younger than both by eight months, always acted the big brother for wild Bucky and attention-seeking Clint. Even now, he watched Clint walk ahead of him, supporting Bucky, and Steve followed behind with the couple of duffel bags that had been tucked behind the bench seat.

The lobby of the building was quaint, in a way you didn’t normally see in the big apartment buildings in the city. Soft pastels and actual couches with real cotton and cushion, instead of the normal hard metallic raised platforms that were common in the big cities, decorated the inside, and the security guard nodded to Steve, smiling pleasantly as Bucky and Clint waited at the tube for Steve to press his thumb to the access pad. Once Steve had been verified by the system, the tube doors opened to reveal a comfortably large tube. Stepping inside, Steve made certain Bucky was braced before keying in the appropriate floor. Moving silently, save for the Imperial News Radio coming out of the speakers, the tube rocketed up to the seventh floor and slid open just as silently.

“Can you believe this place?” Bucky grunted, stepping out into the hallway that had fake wooden wall paneling. Clint murmured in agreement, staring at walls that looked like they came out of the twenty-first century.

Steve couldn’t help chuckling. “It’s a really great place. The mountains make it difficult for consistent net connection, so some of the more modern stuff passed this place by, but it’s really neat. How long are you staying, Bucky?”

Bucky’s mouth twisted as he leaned against the wall, waiting for Steve to key open the doorway. “I think I’m going to have to find a job here,” he said baldly. “The army doesn’t want me back. Black Widow’s get don’t have the same molecular structure or some shit like that; basically, the prosthetics that work for most people don’t work for me. Beyond that, I disobeyed orders to stay put. The colonel had been looking for a reason to discharge me. The only way I’m getting back up in space is as a passenger.”

“Which sucks, because you were one of their best fighter pilots,” Clint said, walking into the apartment. “You really didn’t get around to much, did you?”

Steve glowered at Clint. “I just got all the boxes up, okay?”

“Well, you can’t knock him all that much, Clint,” Bucky mused as he carefully seated himself on the synth-couch. “He’s got the furniture set up.”

Clint snorted, and Steve turned beet red. “Furniture came with the place, Bucky. You think his art and history track landed him a job enough to furnish an apartment this large?”

“Half the price of my old apartment, though,” Steve interrupted quickly. “Living out here is easy on the wallet, I have to say. And it promises to be interesting. The community’s really tight knit, the cohort supposedly all volunteer around the city so I’ll get to know some of the kids. I’m sure we can find something for you too, Bucky. Small towns like these don’t get a lot of influx, even when they need it.”

Bucky looked irate at that, but Steve knew he’d think it over. No one liked to be given lesser options, but Bucky was too proud to just mooch off of Steve and too restless to remain cooped up here. With the idea planted in his mind, Bucky’s restlessness and frustration with his injury could move towards more productive outcomes.

“I’ll help you unpack, Steve. Bucky, you get some rest – do you want your pills?”

“They don’t do anything except make my tongue taste chalky,” Bucky muttered, but he didn’t offer any other complaint, which worried Steve. Bucky could and did complain loudly and often when forced to sit out because of an injury.

Clint caught Steve’s worried look and grimaced, but didn’t pull him aside to explain. Whatever had made Bucky leave the hospital early, then, was something still too fresh for the both of them. Steve resolved to ask later in the evening and instead began unpacking the sheets. The apartment was only a single bedroom, but the couch had a pull-out bed. Bucky could take the bed and Steve would take the pull-out – Clint, if Clint was staying, could sleep on the floor. Even in the city, apartments that could hold more than two people were rare. You had to buy the townhomes if there were three or more of you.

“So what job did you get here?” Bucky called from the couch.

Steve, in the small extra room he had been going to use as a studio (it had a desk, and was currently holding most of the boxes that weren’t in the dining room), called back, “I’m the newest librarian here.”

“Your job’s as boring as you are,” Clint grunted from the doorway.

Steve narrowed his eyes at Clint. “It’s a good paying job, it is something I like, and I’ll be teaching kids. Don’t knock it, Clint, unless you’re going to find something for me to do in the city with my art-hist track?”

Clint shrugged his shoulders. “I’m gonna unpack your kitchen? The sooner we get the boxes done the sooner I can zip back down to the city. Did it really take you two hours to get up here?”

With a sigh, Steve got up with the requisite bedding. “Yeah. Moving crafts require detailed flight plans, you know that. It took me an hour itself to get cleared through the gates, and my clearance isn’t much more than ten feet off the ground in any case. That low, I need to stay on the actual roadways instead of cutting cross-country.”

“Well, in Bucky’s craft we got here in a little under an hour, so hopefully it’ll be that easy to get back tonight.”

“Can’t go at night. They’ll shoot you down and you’ll lose more than a day of work,” Steve pointed out, walking into the living room. “Hey, Buck, just rest here and we’ll unpack the rest of it. You can just rest; we’ll call up some takeout, yeah? You still favor pizza?”

Bucky smiled, but it was small and weary. “Pizza’s cool. Whatever, really – less of an appetite nowadays, anyway.”

Steve tried not to fuss overmuch, spreading a blanket over Bucky and helping the older man lie flat. Then he turned to Clint and tilted a head at the rest of the apartment. “Might as well get moving on those boxes then. No more than two hours, and then you’ve gotta leave to get back on time. You could even take back the rental craft; that way I won’t have to pay extra to return it to the rental craft outlet here. With it empty, you wouldn’t have to fill out the flight plan forms.”

“Aw, man, those things maneuver like stones in the air,” Clint whined, but it was mild whining and Steve found himself setting into the easy rhythm of Clint’s talking and chatter as Bucky fell asleep on the couch.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Over the course of unpacking, Steve slowly dragged the whole story out. He knew, of course, that Bucky had come back from the space circuit missing an arm and invalided out of the Pilot Corps. That was one of the reasons Steve was moving here, after all – the money he had in savings had gone into helping pay for the expensive treatment to build Bucky a bio-interface arm. The Imperial Army might have covered Bucky’s medical costs for the removal and care of his arm, but they wouldn’t spring for anything more than a basic prosthetic that wouldn’t be any good at all. There were some amazing advancements done in bio-interface prosthetics, but all were ridiculously expensive. Steve had paid for it, along with Clint, and in return Clint took up more shitty jobs that he hated and Steve moved out of the city after securing an immigration pass and a job that would pay the same but his expenses would be much lower.

But that was only the first half of the story.

Black Widows were genetically engineered human beings; at the beginning of their use as Royal guards and assassins, the many different religions condemned them as soulless, less than human, and signs of the end times. While the end times still weren’t here yet, the deep-seated hatred was still present. Bucky was treated with derision and suspicion even in the army; how much worse was it when he was among average citizens? So apparently he’d stayed as long as it took to get a bio-reading, measurements, and everything else that the bio-interface arm would need, and then he applied at the Imperial Army Office for an immigration pass to leave the city.

“We didn’t really know you’d take him in,” Clint said, guiltily. “We were just kinda hoping.”

“Of course I’d take him in! I mean, scragg, it isn’t as if I don’t have the room! This place really is half the price – in total – than my old apartment. I have to pay a bit more in water and electricity fees since I’m a recent transfer to the town, but if I stay here for more than six months that gets reduced by ten percent, and stay here a year and I’ll be paying the same as anyone else. Really, it’s fine,” Steve said easily. “You’ll have to try and visit as often as you can, you know.”

“Maybe on rest-days,” Clint murmured in return, moving the sad state of Steve’s cutlery into half of one of his drawers. “You’re right in that it takes so long to get through the gates it’s practically criminal to even try. If I knew how long it would take I wouldn’t have tried to surprise you and just headed out with you – that would’ve given me more time to hang out.”

There was a soft cry from the living room, and they both twisted to look around the small divider to see Bucky shifting restlessly on the couch. After a couple of minutes, his breathing eased out again and they both sighed in relief.

“He’s really not been good. I don’t want him hanging around by himself, you know? Get him a job; his army permit should get him through some doors. Get him engaged again. He’s been really withdrawn,” Clint said softly. “He doesn’t take too well to enforced resting, anyway.”

Steve nodded, pushing sweat out of his eyes. “That the last box?”

“You have a few more of art supply boxes, but that’s it for everything you need. Want me to call for pizza?”

Nodding, Steve considered the puzzle of Bucky and getting him back into the game. “Yeah, get some of his favorites. I don’t like that he’s not eating.”

There wasn’t a reply, and Steve looked away from the couch in the living room to see Clint looking at him with a strange emotion on his face. A bit uncertain as to what it could be – and what put that emotion there – Steve tilted his head. “Something wrong?”

Clint shook his head. “Naw. I just – you’re really excited about this? I know the past few years have been – not great for you.”

Swallowing hard, Steve looked down. “I am, Clint. I like – I like working with kids. And the cohort groups here are apparently really close knit. The library is connected to the different schools, so I will be busy. I can keep my mind off of – all that.”

“Part of this is for you, too,” Clint said softly, making Steve’s head jerk back up in surprise. “Don’t give me that wounded look; you’ve been at loose ends ever since I took that shitty job and haven’t been around as much. Having Bucky around will help _you_ , too.”

“Maybe,” Steve said softly. “I guess.”

Clint patted his shoulder. “I’m always a vid-call or comm call away, you know. _Please_ keep in contact. I had to find out from Piotr about everything, and Piotr isn’t even in our cohort.”

Steve could feel a flush spreading up the back of his neck. “Okay, Clint. I’ll call you every ten-day, how’s that?”

Clint hooked his arm around Steve’s neck and ruffled his hair, making Steve yelp and twist. “Sounds good to me, Old Man,” he teased.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The good thing about small towns was that everything was fairly easy to find. The walls that surrounded the city weren’t as large as the walls that surrounded NYC, and Steve’s apartment building was set on one of the spokes of the hub (all cities were now built with the city hall and city generator the hub of a circular layout), pretty far out from the center, but not so far out that it justified needing a craft vehicle. Instead, Steve set out earlier than he needed to in order to walk around, taking in the sights. In a highly populated city like NYC, every single building was about one hundred stories or higher; the aristocratic class lived on floors no lower than two hundred. Sky bridges created interconnected links between the various skyscrapers, and ferry-crafts carted the working class to their various jobs in the spiraling towers. The lower levels were reserved for the lower classes, the menial jobs, and Steve could remember venturing down to the very ground as a dare. On the ground, gangs roamed freely and without check; no one walked on the actual street anymore. Most factories and generators were located down there, as were the Sentinels. The quality of air was also much worse than normal, and Steve had nearly had an immune system breakdown. Back when he was a kid, he was a lot more fragile and weak than he was now.

He didn’t want to think about that, really.

In a small town like this, there weren’t many ferry-crafts (Steve had only counted two) and there were a lot more personal crafts. There were even a few leftover models from the early twenty-ninth century, and here and there were actual small _houses_. Most of those had been torn down entirely to solve the double problem of overpopulation and less space – but, then again, this was a small town with the highest building being the college, at ten stories tall. There were, apparently, even smaller towns dotting the landscape nearby with the highest buildings only _five_ stories tall.

Steve wondered what the sky must look like, without any buildings jutting up into the vast blackness that was occasionally lit by laser fire from training exercises of the space cadets.

In a city this size, the walk was fairly easy, especially considering that the closer he got to the hub of the city the more walkways were available if he wanted to building hop instead of walking out in the open air. Then again, why wouldn’t he walk out in the open air? Here, he could actually walk on the streets without his breathing suffering in any way. It made it pretty interesting, considering that he hadn’t ever really walked on the actual _earth_ for most of his life.

There were a few trees, here or there, dotting the landscape – both organic and non. There was even a park, a small, narrow thing hemmed in by organic and non trees, with a playground station three stories tall. Now, at oh-seven hundred, it was understandably empty. Instead, young first and second years were skipping or running along to the beginner’s school, chattering with one another as they made their way down the streets. It was interesting that the cohorts didn’t travel by craft to school – but then again, it was a small town. There were quite a few taxi-lines that were driving students from the further edges of the city, but he found the children’s joy infectious and entered the six story library after a bit of trial and error with a huge smile on his face.

Of course, all the children had been going in pretty much the same direction he had been going (which was how he learned all about the woes of Charlie and Sam’s math project that was due an update today). Libraries were supposed to be attached to all schools – a kind of mini-hub, if you would, with the beginner, secondary, and collegiate schools attached through skybridges to the library. On the library’s bottom level there was nothing but a directory, though he could look into the circular glass to see the basement level of the library; like most libraries, there was only one entrance, and it took him a while to find the appropriate floor (third) and the appropriate side of the building (the northern side) where the entry into the inner walls was located. In some ways, all libraries were like a cylinder inside a larger cylinder; the walls of the library could be glass, or steel, or alloy-metal, but it was a stop-gap measure leftover from the thirtieth century, when some Imperial representative got it into their head that everyone deserved an education and access to information, but that meant making certain that the appropriate tech was available everywhere. There had still been libraries that had _books_ , paper-and-binding books, and those were such a rarity that libraries had high rates of theft (of those rarities and of technology). In the end, the security measure put in place to make keep track of all materials taken from the library was limiting all libraries to one door, and tagging all data chips and VR modules. Scanners were placed by the door to catch if any organic tree-matter crossed the boundary line to catch book stealers, as books were not allowed to leave the confines of the library. There were additional security benefits to having one door, because the only way to get the measure passed through the Senatorial Chambers was to give libraries an additional function. Libraries were heavily shielded from radiation and from UV rays; they were designed to act as buildings to wait out a siege in, since there were still bandits and guerilla troops wandering the vast expanses between the towns. If the city walls fell, the libraries were designed to be places where citizens could huddle in and wait for rescue from Imperial troops. A single door was a defensible position.

Not that any city’s UV shields feel, or any anarchists ever stormed a city, but both scenarios had been a serious concern during the mid-thirtieth century.

“Hi, can I help you?”

He turned to see the main desk manned by a woman with fiery red hair and sharp, intelligent eyes. She had a warm smile and a nametag with the name “Virginia” in large print, though she looked mildly alarmed at seeing him in the lobby of the library. With his grin still in place, he put out his hand. “My name’s Steve Rogers; I filled the open librarian position last week?”

Her eyes lit up. “That’s right, wow, okay, you’re much earlier than you had to be, but lucky the head librarian is a total stickler for punctuality and he’s in right now. Go ahead to that door there, marked ‘employees only’ – you don’t have a keycode yet, but I’ll buzz you through.”

Bobbing his head in thanks, he made his way through the door and nearly mowed over a short man, dressed in a professional suit and carrying data chips, flexisheets, and a reader. “I’m so sorry!” Steve said reflexively, and then his cheeks flushed when he realized he had practically knocked down his new boss, Phil Coulson.

Sir Coulson (“ _Just Coulson is fine, Rogers_ ”) – _Coulson_ blinked at him and smiled easily. “Well, Rogers, you’re in early. Why don’t you head over to your locker and put anything you have with you – comm unit, credit carrier, refresher unit, for example – into it and pull out your nametag. Since you’re here this early, you can sit out with Potts and have her show you the ropes. For your first day, you’ll get overtime if you stay the whole day – and that way you can get a feel for what each shift entails and what you’ll have to handle.”

Steve shifted uncertainly. “I, um, I actually have someone at home I need to take care of at the moment.”

Coulson raised an eyebrow but said nothing on the subject. “Then, tomorrow, would you come in around lunch and stay until closing?”

“That’s perfect,” Steve said quickly, smiling.

“Then when Wagner comes in at sixteen-hundred you can head home. Let me know if you have any questions Potts or Carter can’t answer.”

Nodding, Steve watched Coulson exit the room and turned to the employee lockers lined up along the far wall. His was squished between the wall and a flame retardant, but his name was already programmed in, as was his thumbprint. Inside, a data chip and a nametag waited for him, and he placed his credit carrier and comm unit onto one of the shelves and tapped open the data chip file.

The holograph menu popped up, with different documents available. A keycode, blueprint of the library, cursory description of shifts, employee handbook, medical benefits information, and a brief bullet-list of procedure to clock in and clock out were listed in alphabetical order, and Steve tapped on the clock-in-clock-out procedure to look quickly over his employee ID and the steps needed to fully come on shift.

Set up on shift, he pinned the nametag to his shirt and followed the hallway into the behind-the-desk area, where the red-headed woman was still behind the desk. “Mam Potts?” he called.

She turned, smiling. “Oh, everyone calls me Pepper. Should I call you Rogers?”

“No, Steve’s fine,” Steve said immediately. Last names were more appropriate and proper, but Steve never saw anything wrong with inviting people to call him his first name.

“Great, well, Steve, you’ve got to put up with my insatiable questions,” she teased, eyebrows wiggling as she patted the chair next to her. “The cohorts don’t start trooping in until it hits oh-nine-hundred, so we’ve got a few more hours. Normally we only get the post-collegiate scholars, and they rarely need our help.”

“How’s it set up here?” he asked quickly. “I’ve never – well, I’ve worked with kids before, and volunteered some with the city libraries, but I’m certain you have your own way of doing things.”

Tapping the in-desk screen, she pulled up a schedule and tapped the first block. “We get the students in order of year, two cohorts at a time. Hits then, we’ll have first and second years, and so forth. Collegiate level students come when they please, but we’ll get the thirteenth year after the last batch of secondary school cohorts. Their teachers are supposed to interact with them more than us, but for some of the younger students we provide story-telling, history lessons, and so forth. The older students all have their own research projects to handle, but every month or so we handle a professionalization seminar for secondary and collegiate cohorts.”

Steve nodded, eyeing the schedules. “How late do we operate?”

“Oh, pretty much until midnight!” Potts – Pepper – laughed. “I have been told city libraries close pretty early, but we stay open because we have professors in here, teachers doing lesson plans. Up on the sixth floor there’s a café, there’s even a small nook with some sleep-couches and synth-blankets. Libraries are supposed to house knowledge, not just store it, so Coulson always says. We’re a home here.”

Something inside Steve’s chest loosened. “That sounds… pretty amazing, I’d say.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The morning passed pretty quickly, especially when the cohorts started coming around. Carter – rather, Sharon Carter, who reminded him a bit too much of Peggy – came in around noon to help with the older groups, and between the two of them he learned that it was one hundred percent completely true about small towns and gossip. Everyone knew everyone, apparently, even considering that each cohort held upwards of seventy children.

“You have to understand, we’re a very self-contained group,” Sharon said easily as he stared in shock as they not only remembered each child by name but what data chips the children had been looking at last time. “I think you’re the first immigrant to the city – who was the one before him?”

“Fury,” Pepper answered immediately, watching as the fifth and sixth years were settling around desks with their readers. “Fury came in and opened up that stimulant place about a year ago, makes the best coffee. Since Fury’s café, everyone goes there for their gossip fix.” She smiled warmly at Steve, even as she said sharply, “I see you, Parker, you don’t get to study outside your project field for at least ten minutes, sit back down and work on your paper.”

“I’m done it!” the skinny sixth-cohort male appealed. “I can have free time if I want!”

Pepper sighed and rolled her eyes. “Steve, why don’t you take him around the floor, let him pick his new study interest?”

Not minding the reprieve he was getting from the other kids, Steve stood up and nodded at the weedy kid. Parker was slim, dark haired, with big glasses and a stylized spider on his shoulder. As they walked down the rows of data chips, Steve motioned at the spider. “Family crest?” he asked, because aristocrat kids often would distinguish themselves from the rest of their cohort by adding the family crest.

“Huh? No, I just like spiders,” Parker said, with that shyness children gave unknown adults. “They’re pretty cool. A lot of the nanobot tech and bio-interface concepts were designed with insectoid shapes, and the spider’s a recurring theme. There are still a few natural spiders that haven’t been mutated by the radiation waves; you can see them in the crypt-zoo or museum.”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, interested. He had gone through the requisite life and natural sciences courses in his secondary and collegiate years, but only the bare minimum. He’d chosen his final project to be on wolves, because his deceased father had been an Imperial Wolf, and he’d wanted to know more about the animal that gave the highly specialized soldiers their name. “Have you already done your yearly project on life and natural sciences, then?”

Parker smiled wryly, a quick twist of the lips that was there and gone again. “Yeah. First one I did. I’ve already finished my bio-tech project, and my mathematics project, _and_ my physics and chem project.”

Ah, science nerds, Steve thought fondly. Bruce had been like that. “Have you done your languages project? Maybe your art, or your history?”

“Those are boring,” Parker replied with finality, the way children did when they thought they knew everything about the subject.

“Hmm,” Steve hummed, and moved towards the mythology section.

Parker trailed around reluctantly, silent as Steve – still getting used to the new library – tried to find what he vaguely remembered from his own history projects. Finally, the silence seemed to bother Parker enough that he asked, “Why’d you move here, Zhu Rogers?”

“Sir – but just Rogers will be fine,” Steve replied absently. “Ah. Here we go.” He took a couple of data chips off the shelf and turned to face Parker. “I didn’t have the money to continue living in the big city. My best friend needed some medical work done that wasn’t covered by the Army, so I did my best to help him out. And it’s much nicer out here, actually. In the city, you can’t walk on the ground. Everything’s on skybridges and on ferry-crafts. There are maybe a hundred libraries alone, each with a beginner, secondary, collegiate, and post-collegiate school attached to them. It’s a big place.”

Parker’s eyes were wide. “I’d like to see it some day,” he breathed.

With a chuckle, Steve moved out of the row to the nearest table. Each table had an in-desk screen, and he plugged the first data chip into the receiving slot. “It’s pretty exciting. Being there was fun, but sometimes you just need a break, you know? I think this place will be pretty cool. In the city, you didn’t know anyone at all, unless they were in your cohort or attached to your library. There were just too many people. Everyone had data jobs, for the most part. It was difficult for an art and history track like myself to find a good job. Here, it’s easier. Quieter.” He smiled at Parker. “Nicer.”

“I like data jobs,” Parker said quietly, still looking starry-eyed at the idea of a big city. “And it’d be nice to not know a lot of people.”

Steve tilted his head. Some things never changed, he thought silently, categorizing the shadows and the wariness in Parker’s body language. Bullies were universal. “I was picked on a lot,” he murmured, patting the bench seat to encourage Parker to sit down, though there was a good distance between them on the seat so as not to intimidate the kid. “It wasn’t until my post-collegiate years that I got this big – and even then, it was a cheater’s way I got big. But I was pretty wimpy as a kid. If I didn’t have Bucky and Clint – those two are my best friends still – I’d’ve gotten picked on a lot. Not knowing people isn’t always a protection.”

For a minute, it looked like Parker might touch on the subject, speak about it, but then he shook his head and looked down at the revolving menu on the screen. “This is Greek and Roman mythology.”

“Yeah. I figured, if you haven’t done history, you probably haven’t done mythology either, right? And mythology can be fun.”

“Mythology’s all made up stuff,” Parker said doubtfully.

Steve grinned. “True. _But_. It counts towards your liberal art credits. And you didn’t seem to like art when I mentioned it – which, you’re a little heathen, not liking art?” That pulled a genuine smile out of Parker. “So mythology is an acceptable substitute in most curriculum.”

“What’s the myth about?”

“Well, see, you’re not the only person to be fascinated by spiders.” Steve tapped the key for Athena, and searched through until he found the myth of Arachne.

It was a good ten minutes later that Parker and Steve rejoined the group, Parker clutching the different data chips on Arachne and Anansi and other mythical traditions around the world centered around the arachnid.

Pepper stared in surprise. “Parker’s reading mythology.”

Sharon looked up from where she was helping another student with brainstorming. “Really?” she asked with interest.

The two of them looked at each other and a shared look passed through their eyes that worried Steve greatly.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Steve began.

Smiling widely, Sharon pointed at Steve. “You’re in charge of the liberal arts curriculum from now on,” she said.

Considering that Steve was a liberal arts degree holder, that sat perfectly fine with him.

It was in the middle of shelving the data chips and straightening up the work area with Pepper that she asked, out of the blue, “Do you have a spousal partner?”

Steve’s head popped up. “What? No – why?”

“Ah, then you have a spousal hopeful?”

“ _No_ , Pepper – why are you discussing this? Why are we discussing this? This discussion is over,” Steve grumbled, ducking his head.

Pepper laughed. “It’s adorable that your ears go red when you blush, you know.”

That only made Steve blush more, and he cleared his throat. “Why the interest anyway?” he asked pointedly. “You looking for someone? Surely there’s someone here that—”

“Well, I’m looking _for someone_ , meaning that I know someone that really needs a good kick in the pants and I think you’d be really good with him,” Pepper said slowly. “But. You know. Are you considering dating any time soon?”

Steve shifted awkwardly. “You know, I’m not really comfortable answering that question right now. I’m not sure I’m ready.”

For a moment, Pepper stared at him with too-sharp eyes and close inspection that made him feel oddly vulnerable. Finally, she nodded. “Well. It’s your choice and decision. But if you do want to start dating, I have a blind date option for you, just to see if you guys are compatible or not.”

“Great,” he sighed.

“What’s great?” Sharon asked, waltzing over with a reader in her hand.

Steve shook his head in the negative, and when Pepper didn’t answer, Sharon huffed. “Well then, if you’re not going to share with the class, let’s get you set up with the liberal arts requirements for our beginner and secondary students, and the different liberal arts tracks offered to the collegiate students. Coulson has put some more data in your locker on it, but I’ll show you the tech we have for the liberal arts courses.”

Grateful to get away from Pepper’s too-invasive questioning, Steve followed along behind Sharon and lost himself in the different courses he’d be handling and discussing at this new job.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“How was your first day of work?”

Steve sniffed the air. “Where did you find something to cook?” he asked. After all, he’d only moved in yesterday – while he had a few small foodstuffs, there was nothing in his storage unit that could produce such an amazing smell.

Bucky turned away from the contained oven. “Just heated up some of the leftovers, threw in a bit of stuff. We soldiers are pretty resourceful when it comes to food. How’d the day go?”

“I really like this one kid. Reminds me of Bruce – you remember Banner? Yeah. Only now I’m in a position to actually do something if someone picks on him.” Steve kicked off his shoes and dumped his small bag full of his employee items onto the couch. “I think it’ll work out pretty well, actually. They’re going to stick me in the liberal arts curriculum, focusing on the beginner and secondary schools. Collegiate level will be handled by Pepper. She’s a brilliant young woman, by the way; you’d be very impressed.”

“I’ve got my own woman, thank you very much,” Bucky responded, but his voice was awkward and rang a bit false. Steve hoped it was just left-over depression or setback from the discharge, since Bucky and Nat were pretty good together even if their fights were like watching two experienced pilots go head to head in battle.

Steve licked his lips and debated his next words, but in the end he sat down at the small table and watched Bucky.

Of course, Bucky was his best friend, and knew there was something Steve was keeping back. “Go on, ask it,” Bucky grunted, pulling the platters out of the oven. It looked like some mix of mashed potatoes, cut-up pizza, and some limp pieces of lettuce and carrots. Some type of seasoning must have been used, considering the smell, and for a moment Steve’s heart clenched at the idea of having a home-cooked meal again. Then he pushed it aside and considered Bucky’s words.

“How is Natasha?” he finally asked, in the most neutral tone he could manage.

Bucky let out a sigh and placed one platter in front of Steve before placing one opposite Steve and sitting down. “She’s… fine. Thinks I’m an idiot, but fine.”

After a pause, Steve realized Bucky wasn’t going to volunteer any more information. “You talk to her regularly?” Steve tried again.

“You started dating again?” Bucky asked pointedly.

Steve clenched his teeth and looked down at his plate. After a moment, Bucky let out a deep sigh. “That was unfair of me,” he muttered. “Yeah, I talk to her fairly regularly. But she’s still a Tiger and I’m no longer a Falcon, so I’m not holding my breath.”

Swallowing hard, Steve tried to reach out in turn. “I’m… considering dating again. New people here, you know? And no memories.”

“Good, that’s good,” Bucky said immediately. It was Bucky’s turn to hesitate, and Steve just knew what Bucky was about to say. “You know Peggy wasn’t your fault, right?”

“Just – I’m dealing with it, okay?” Steve said softly. “I’m… working on it.”

After a quiet moment, Bucky poked at his mashed potatoes and said with studied casualness, “Any nice people where you work?”

“Scragg it, Bucky, I literally moved in yesterday, stop trying to fix me up with someone,” Steve groaned in exasperation. “Bad enough someone at work is trying to set me up on a blind date.”

That, of course, grabbed Bucky’s attention – but it was meant to, and it would get them off of the more uncomfortable topics (at least, for the most part) and make the discussion more light-hearted. “Who? And with who?”

“I don’t know, Buck – Pepper didn’t mention,” Steve sighed, taking a bite of his mashed potatoes. “She just said she knew a guy that would be good with me. Or I’d be good for. I didn’t pay attention because _first day of work_ , you know? Haven’t even seen the city all that much. How could I start dating right now?”

At that, Bucky gave him a _look_ , but when Steve dropped his gaze, Bucky sighed. “So, come on, tell me about your workplace, then,” Bucky said, and Steve took the opening that it was, discussing in detail the preciseness of Coulson, Pepper’s vibrant hair and sharp tongue, Sharon’s sunny disposition and gentle smile (neglecting to mention her last name, as it brought up too much baggage, since Peggy’s last name had also been Carter), and the quirky Kurt Wagner, who was so enthusiastic about the music and math courses that Steve couldn’t help but listen to Kurt wax poetic about the mathematics for a good half an hour after Steve was supposed to have come home.

Bucky seemed to take vicarious pleasure hearing about Steve’s workday, which reminded Steve to check with Pepper and see if there was anywhere that would be looking for someone of Bucky’s talents to maybe work, maybe just volunteer – but _something_ that would give Bucky an action to focus on that wouldn’t have him sitting here alone, focused on nothing but his lost arm and opportunities.

That evening, starting to make up the study into a livable bedroom and moving the boxes of art supplies out of it into the closet in the bedroom, Steve turned over the idea of introducing Bucky to the town. He wanted to get Bucky out there, wanted to get him involved in life again, but it was going to be tricky. There was Bucky’s class to consider, and the Freedom Riots weren’t so far away from people’s memories; being a part of the army, especially in small towns that resented Imperial rule and Imperial soldiers from the atrocities done during the Riots, could be detrimental.

Well, Pepper had mentioned there was a very good café that everyone frequented. It’d be public enough that most people wouldn’t want to cause a scene, and it would give Steve a chance to see how people reacted to Bucky, and how Bucky reacted to them.

“You’re thinking too hard. And I told you, the couch is fine for me.”

Steve looked up at Bucky and smiled. “You can’t sleep on the couch forever, and this is a good way to save money since we’ll be paying for the bio-interface treatments a while yet. Unless you want to get a different apartment?”

Scowling, Bucky folded his arms. “I get a pension from the army.”

Before Bucky could continue, Steve stood up and lifted the last few boxes he’d piled on the desk. “The pension would cover rent but not food, you know that. Besides, having someone around is comforting. And this way if there’re ever any problems with the new arm I can be nearby and we can get it fixed up. You’re stuck with me, Buck.” Grinning, he moved past Bucky into the hallway. “Feel like getting breakfast tomorrow?”

“We should go _shopping_ ,” Bucky grumbled, but he followed Steve into the bedroom and sat on the bed as Steve stacked the boxes in the back of the closet. “Won’t people stare?”

“Who cares about them?” Steve replied immediately. “You never did before.”

“Your job wasn’t linked to people liking me before,” Bucky muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know how small towns work. One person dislikes me and associates me with you, next thing you know you’re ostracized. I’ve seen it happen.”

Steve twisted around and banged his knee on the inside of the closet. Swearing under his breath, he maneuvered his way out and stood up, hands on his hips. “James Barnes, if you think for one minute that matters to me, you’ve been breathing recycled space-air too long.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth twitched up in a smile, and after a long minute, he asked, “Where’s this breakfast, anyway?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t very difficult to find the stimulant café. In fact, it was pretty much in the dead center of the hub, across the street and to the right of the library. It was also packed full of people.

“Huh.”

Steve had to agree with that assessment. It looked like the store desperately needed more personnel, even if the manager wasn’t actively searching. In any case, Steve opened the door and let Bucky enter first.

All eyes turned to them.

Bucky cleared his throat awkwardly and looked over at Steve as if to ask whether such behavior was normal. Not that Steve could answer; it looked as if they had all caught the scent of something juicy, and Steve couldn’t remember any time that anyone looked like that at him. Ever.

“Oh, you must be Coulson’s new boy!” an elderly woman said, smiling warmly. “Coulson mentioned he was hiring on a new librarian. But he didn’t mention two of you!”

“Oh – oh no, there’s only the – the one,” Steve stammered. “My name’s Steve Rogers; I’m the new librarian. This is my friend; he’s staying with me a while.”

Another person, not as old-looking as the woman, but definitely up there in his years, stroked his chin. “Spousal partners ought to look out for one another, hmm? Good thing you’re doing for him, there. And you, young man – nothing’s more healing than the fresh air of a small town. You’ll get better in no time.”

“He’s lost an arm, not caught the flu,” a younger girl remarked tartly. “Come, come sit at the front. Fury’ll serve you personally, I’m sure.”

Quite by accident, Steve and Bucky found themselves at the counter, loud and complacent speculation on them going on around them. Bucky stared at Steve in shock, but it wasn’t as if Steve had any better handle on what was taking place.

A tall, older man with one missing eye clumped up to the counter and glowered at the two of them. “What are you getting?” he demanded of Steve.

Steve licked his lips nervously and tried not to stare at the cybernetic eye sitting in the otherwise scarred and empty socket. “Ah – just black coffee, for me, please. Thank you.”

The man turned to glare at Bucky, looking at him closely. “Pilot, kid?”

Bucky’s mouth tightened. “I was, sir. Falcon class.”

“Good division. Gotta be smart to have gotten in there. Well. Are you staying here until they take you back? Because space pilots rarely get back into the seat once they’re invalided out. What are you having?”

Bucky’s good fist clenched against his side, and he said tersely, “Cinnamon mocha, if you please.”

“Tea, or coffee?”

“Coffee,” Bucky responded.

The man grunted and moved away from the countertop. “So happens that Pepper came in the other day telling me that there might be someone who needs a spot of work. And so happens that your friend Rogers there managed to hold himself admirably at his job. So. First drink is free. You looking for work, we’ll see if I can sort you out. If not here, there are other places that could use an extra hand.”

Bucky swallowed and turned to look at Steve with accusing eyes. “How many people did you tell about me?” he asked roughly, and Steve put up placating hands.

But before Steve could say anything, the man came stumping back with their orders and leveled a finger at Bucky. “Now hold your tongue. Rogers there was coming with the intention of looking for work for you anyway, so Pepper tells me. If I waited for him to try and sneak away from you I’d be waiting all morning, and this place is busy enough without my having to keep my eye on you two.”

“News certainly travels fast,” Steve grumbled.

“’Course. Small town. We got nothing else to do but gossip – before work, during, and after. More entertainment than any of those big holographic features at the tainment-plexes,” the man said derisively. “Name’s Fury. No ‘zhus’ or ‘sirs’ around here. Let me know your decision tomorrow. What’s your name?”

“Bucky,” Bucky replied, dazed, and then he shook his head. “I mean. James, James Barnes.”

“Well, Barnes, over in the corner is Braddock, and right here is Frost, and in the back of the shop is Odinsson. New potential coworkers, if you decide to come back tomorrow. Otherwise, they’ll just make certain you get to meet everyone.” Fury handed them their drinks and nodded at the two of them.

Apparently, since Fury was done with them, it was open season for everyone else. Steve and Bucky were shown to a pair of chairs and plied with questions. What was the strangest thing was that Steve _saw_ people leave, as it neared midmorning, and yet it never felt as if the shop was any less-crowded than before. He knew that in small towns, the work days were more flexible, but in the city all shops had been pretty much deserted between nine-hundred and fifteen-hundred. It was odd, but he and Bucky were having too much fun to really notice.

Frost had come over to introduce herself as Emma, throwing Bucky a cutting look when he tried to call her Zhu, and an even more scathing look when he had corrected it to Mam. Small towns, Steve was learning, didn’t stand by titles. While in the city, you called everyone you met Zhu unless they informed you they’d rather be called Sir or Mam, here they seemed almost insulted by such actions. She had the accent of an aristocrat, though no family crest adorned her clothing – and really, what aristocrat would be living out here, in the hills and uncivilized lands, serving coffee?

Odinsson was manning the counter with Fury, but he managed to find time to sit down at their table, introduce himself enthusiastically as Thor, and then proceeded to introduce every person who entered the café to Steve and Bucky. It was becoming wildly apparent that all the sayings about small towns and everyone knowing everyone else were completely true when it came to this young man. He wasn’t human; his ears were pointed and his eyes crackled with small lightning bolts with each blindingly brilliant smile that flashed across his face (and he never seemed to stop smiling). It had taken Steve a few minutes to pin down the race, and if Thor hadn’t casually mentioned that his grounder would be in later in the afternoon, Steve wouldn’t have been able to. But Thor was Asgardian, an alien race that had an affinity for electricity and near-immortality when paired with another alien race, the Jotuns. Pairings, however, were rare; in ancient history, the Asgardian race enslaved the Jotuns, in order to have grounders on hand at all times. It was only three centuries past that the Jotuns had become free, and it was causing a lot of troubles for the Asgardians. Without the Jotuns’ ability to ground their powers, they were prone to fits of berserker rage, uncontrollable electric bursts, and they became mortal. The fact that Thor had a grounder explained why he was allowed to live in a small town like this one without having the Imperial army breathing over his shoulder.

As it approached lunch, Steve became aware that Bucky was having the time of his life. He, more than Steve, was a people person, even if he was intensely private. He thrived around others, which made it all the worse when people found out about his class and abandoned or ostracized him. Braddock hadn’t come over, but she watched them with careful, wary eyes. Steve watched her move and realized, with a shock, that she was Black Widow get just like Bucky – more diluted, with those purple-blue eyes, but Steve would recognize that type of prowling and grace no matter how diluted the blood. She was cleaning tables and picking up silverware, and slowly but surely she was starting to move closer to where Steve and Bucky were sitting, talking with a group of four who were joking loudly with Bucky and discussing the different racing models of crafts. When the four saw her drifting over, the woman – Sif – smiled warmly and got up to talk quietly with her while the stout, heavyset male _(Hogun? No; Volstagg. Too many names, Steve thought ruefully)_ said his goodbyes and made his way out of the shop.

The two remaining males slapped Bucky on the back. “Well, Fury mentioned you’re looking for work, and if you need something to do, you can always pop around the garage,” the younger man offered – Fandral, he had asked to be called – to Bucky, while the other man, Hogun, waved enthusiastically at someone who had just walked into the café. “You look like you know your way around some of the different models, and I wouldn’t mind hearing more about the battles in space!”

Bucky grinned, easy and open, and the sight of such a smile on Bucky’s face made Steve relax. “I might come around – we’ll see how good these ‘classics’ really are!” he said, and then Braddock was at their table, her tray with discarded dishes sitting to the table to the left of them.

Bucky stiffened, staring at her with wide eyes, and she smiled quietly. “Brother,” she murmured.

Steve became aware of Fury watching the interchange with narrowed eyes, and wasn’t certain whether that was a good thing or not – but before he could make up his mind about what to do about it, Bucky tentatively held up his hand, fingers spread wide. “I cannot greet you with both hands, sister,” he responded, voice brittle, “but I greet you all the same.”

“You may call me Betsy,” she responded smoothly, lining up her left hand with Bucky’s right, just their fingertips touching. “And I value your greeting no less for all that it is one-handed. Scars are a mark of true warriors.”

Steve stared at Bucky. His friend seemed physically choked up, eyes a little glassy, mouth rounded in awe. After a moment, he tilted his head to the right, and she mirrored his movements, tilting her head to the right, and then she stepped away, letting her left hand fall to her side. Picking up the tray, she nodded to Steve and turned to walk to the counter. Fury gave Bucky a flat stare, but said nothing at all.

Since it was getting close to when Steve needed to be on shift anyway, he decided it would be better to get going. “I’ve got work, Buck – you wanna walk me over? You’ve got the keycode to the apartment, and I’ve programmed your prints into the system, so it’ll open for you… And you have my credit chip, yeah? Pick up some groceries and see if you can find a place that’ll deliver a cot or a bed or something. Not too crazy.”

“Old Man Rogers,” Bucky said fondly, tapping the side of the table with their running tab. The screen lit up, summarizing the total (it wasn’t _that_ expensive, thank the void), and Bucky slid the credit chip along the bottom to pay out their total. “Alright, I’ll walk you over. And I know better, okay? I’ll be fine. Stop worrying. I’m just gonna wander around a bit, maybe look in at the collegiate building.”

Steve let out a small sigh – but Bucky was practical, for all that he acted less mature than Steve most of the time. He knew to keep it reasonable. Patting Bucky’s shoulder, Steve walked across the street and made his way into the library.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Wagner – Kurt, he had asked to be called – was just as enthusiastic halfway through their shift, at twenty-hundred, as he had been at the beginning. He and Steve chatted as Sharon finished up her end-shift duties; Steve had learned yesterday that Kurt always had the second shift, and Pepper always had the first shift. Coulson never seemed to _leave_ , which was creepy enough. Not that Coulson was creepy – Steve respected the man who could handle two shouting adolescents with nothing more than a raised eyebrow – but Steve had already turned around too many times from shelving or coding or building his curriculum to find Coulson just _standing_ there, silently. The man moved like a ghost, and Steve would think he was of Black Widow get if not for the fact that he didn’t have the same predatory awareness that Bucky had. Maybe he was just a retired soldier – it happened, sometimes. Coulson didn’t look like he was old enough for retirement age, but then again, he could have been in a special battalion and the special operational forces had a much younger retirement age (in part because so few actually lived to see it).

In any case, Steve and Sharon had been brought in to cycle around the high-traffic times; Sharon to help out with beginner and secondary schooling, Steve to help out with secondary and collegiate schooling. They would switch around every so often, of course, especially since Steve wasn’t certain it was all that fair to Bucky to leave him alone at the apartment from sixteen-hundred until midnight, every day of the week, or even from noon until twenty-hundred. Then again, Bucky could be out getting a job himself, so maybe Steve was worrying unnecessarily.

At twenty-hundred and thirty, Steve had been keying in the different options for the art history classes when a little window popped up on the top of his holographic display.

_< did u tk my Research agin??? u no i don lik it when u tuch my Stuff u cud lose hand 1 day tuchin wron Thng!!>_

Frowning, he turned to look over at Kurt. “I thought Coulson said personal messaging systems weren’t compatible with the desk computers?”

Kurt blinked at the flashing box, complete with bad grammar and capital letters all over the place, and then laughed. “No, that’s our resident celebrity,” he said. “You’re sitting at Pepper’s normal station; I never use that computer. He must have seen it was on and figured she was working late today.”

“Oh,” Steve murmured – because that didn’t explain it at all. After a moment, he tapped the window with his index finger and keyed in the message _< I’m sorry – this is not Mam Potts. She has left for the day. It would be best to contact her via her communication device.>_

There was barely a second before he got back _< wel who iz ths thn? u New Guy? whts name? u likn it hr so far??>_

Steve glanced over at Kurt, who was watching Steve with an interested and almost calculated look in his eye. “You know, Pepper might just be right,” he murmured, before standing up and keying off his console. “Coulson won’t get mad at you if you talk with him – after all, there’s no one in the entire library beyond a few professors up on the fifth floor and two post-collegiate students in the basement. I’ll make the rounds, see if anyone needs help. Go ahead; I already know your curriculum’s mostly done.”

Without waiting for an answer, Kurt strolled to the hallway that linked to the doors outside.

That still didn’t explain how this person managed to contact him, if the requisite hardware for personal messaging wasn’t compatible with this console. Turning back to the blinking display, there was another message waiting for him.

_< u mst b DinSoar if u typin this SLOW!!?? how do functn not evn knO hurry Up!>_

Narrowing his eyes at the words, Steve keyed in, more snappishly than he intended, _< I am at work and conversing with a stranger who hacked into my console is not my idea of a fun time.>_

_< sound lik ‘fun time’ hurt u fr 2 type u evn kno wht Fun Tiem meen???>_

_< Go away.>_

_< awwW, dn b lik tat! u kno what u shud swich Colsons tys a round n mak him Look fr them he liks HidNSeek trust me on ths 1 u wud hav Fun n mayb then u no what Fun really is.>_

Steve frowned at the screen. _< Your grammar and spelling are atrocious. Are you a student?>_

There was a long pause, and then there came a single message.

_< woops i frgot but U really don no me n tats awSum us gon talk l8r when u Nxt on shift but need 2 go atm will c u sumtime latir ill be lookin fr u n wachin u u cant scape me bc i am boss!>_

Steve rubbed his head, trying to make sense of the conversation. _< I’m sorry; I really am at work and cannot speak with you at the moment. You are more than welcome to come to the front desk where I am sitting.>_

But nothing more came from the message box, and Steve had a brief moment of regret – that he quickly questioned. Why was he even thinking about continuing the conversation? He was at work, and that was highly unprofessional.

The typing made him think young child, or adolescent. Certainly someone who had been looking for Pepper; perhaps someone who needed her expertise on the classical arts and mathematics curriculum and electives. Steve tapped a finger on the desk, considering. Someone who was good with computers and the technical systems, to be able to bring up the messaging box. Then again, at least half the kids nowadays knew how to hack and twist through the electrical wires that bound their world together. Perhaps it was just that Steve didn’t know how to block it that it popped up.

With a sigh, he reached up to exit out the conversation and wipe it from the record. A moment before he did, though, he paused. He couldn’t really say why he hesitated, but for the fact that the teasing had reminded him of Bucky when Bucky was younger, more prone to acting the fool to try and get Steve to loosen up and do whatever deviant thing Bucky’s mind was set on at the moment. After another moment, he pulled out his personal chip drive and plugged it into the console, saving the conversation on it. He could always show it to Pepper, especially since it was someone she knew.

“See that he left you alone?”

Yelping, Steve jumped in his chair and twisted around to see Kurt standing there, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Y-yes, he did,” Steve said, recovering from the surprise. “Does he always contact Pepper through her console?”

Kurt laughed and sat down next to Steve. “Only when he can’t get her to pick up her communication device – which is often, because he whines, is demanding, and has no concept of personal boundaries.”

“You said he was the local celebrity?”

With a nod, Kurt double-tapped his own console to bring up the holographic display. “Everyone knows him. He teaches some of the advanced post-collegiate classes on mechanical and computer systems. He’s an amazing engineer, one of the best in the whole world, and he came up here for some privacy for the rest of the world. We’re inclined to let him have his privacy, because his mother came from this town and she was good sort, if a bit flighty.”

“Teaches?” Steve repeated. “It looked like he was a kid, with the way he typed.”

Kurt made a face. “We-ell,” he said, drawing the word out, “yes and no. I mean, he’s an adult – probably older than you, a bit older than me – but he likes teaching the younger kids sometimes because he relates to them really well. And Pepper’s someone he took to. Kept on bothering her, hanging around. He’s like a puppy, and sometimes shooing him away makes you feel like you’re kicking one. Though he is the most infuriating person to have around. He’s a certified genius and reminds you of it often. Very full of himself, but a good heart under all that anyway.”

Steve stared at him a moment before shaking his head. “This sounds like a daily program.”

Chuckling, Kurt nodded. “We may be a small town, but we keep ourselves busy. Especially with him around.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Steve let himself into the apartment at half past zero-hundred. While normally the late shift ended at zero-hundred, and it was easy to just lock the doors at zero-hundred and walk out, Coulson had showed up to show Steve the more complicated shut-down procedures as well as the safety features. Steve had taken detailed notes, keeping them on his reader, and it took them about twenty minutes past the hour to complete the full check.

“Dinner’s in the oven!”

Steve paused in the hallway. The apartment looked the same, mostly, except there was a small personal console sitting on the low coffee table, and the inside smelled heavenly. “Where are _you_?” he asked.

Bucky’s head popped out of the spare room, looking more happy and relaxed than he had been when Steve had left him earlier the previous day. “Hey, Steve, how was work?”

“I think I should be asking you that question!” Steve replied, setting his bag down against the wall and walking into the kitchen. “You’re glowing, Buck!”

Bucky scowled at him, but even that wasn’t as fierce as it once was. “Just eat your scragging dinner,” he grumbled, ducking back into the room.

The dinner in the oven was some type of dish with noodles and a thick sauce over small cubes of faux-meat. Going into the cooling unit for a drink showed that Bucky had indeed stocked the kitchen and gotten everything put together with no trouble at all.

Which reminded Steve of the other duties that needed to be done around the house. “Hey, Bucky, I’m gonna take the laundry down to the cleaning units tomorrow – do you have anything you want me to grab?” Steve called out.

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky replied, sounding distracted.

Steve ate a few more forkfuls and then asked, “So, then, did you find a job? And how was the collegiate building?”

“I think so.” Bucky came out of the study room, stretching. He was rolling his shoulders, wincing a bit, and Steve felt guilty for not being around to help out more.

“You should be resting,” Steve mumbled, and Bucky snorted. “You should! You’ve only been out of the hospital two days, and it’s only been about three weeks since the operation. Clint brought you here so you wouldn’t have to worry.”

Bucky sighed. “Look, Steve, I’m the get of Black Widows. We heal fast, and beyond that I get really antsy when there’s nothing for me to do, you know that. My arm’s supposed to come in tomorrow, and then I can really start doing things around here.”

“You’re cooking, I bet you were in there putting together the bed you got, and you’re looking for a job. You just – Bucky, you really should let us try and take care of you.”

For a long moment, Bucky held Steve’s gaze. Steve didn’t drop his gaze, and instead lifted his chin.

“Old Man Rogers,” Bucky sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. “Look, I – I know we’re your family, okay? I don’t think you know how much Clint and I, and, heck, even Banner and Nat and the rest of the crew, appreciated the fact that you worried over us and cared for us. No one ever did that for us. But we’re all adults now, Steve. We’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to get into scrapes, and you’re not always going to be there. We can and will take care of ourselves.”

Steve let his eyes narrow at Bucky, trying to keep his shoulders from curving defensively. “But when you’re here, I can take care of you, and I worry whether you’re here or not. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed, leaning back and tipping his head up at the sky. “I figured. Still. We really _don’t_ want to worry you.”

Steve smiled weakly and ate a few more bites of his food. Bucky stared at him a moment before huffing out a sigh. “So I might have gotten a job. Maybe. We’ll see how it works out.”

“Oh?” Steve asked, looking up from his plate. “Where?”

“Was hanging around the collegiate-building, watching some of the physical education classes out on the fields. Figured I’d apply as a teacher there. I can teach that without an arm, in any case – everything else will be really hard to do until I get used to my new arm.”

Steve shook his head. “Don’t rush to get a job, okay? My job pays pretty well, and things are a lot cheaper here than in the city. We don’t need additional income, not yet. Don’t take a job that you’ll get bored at when you get back to full capabilities. Wait until you get your arm and you work with it, getting used to it. Then maybe you’ll prefer to, I don’t know, apply at that café, or that garage you were speaking about. If, when you’ve adjusted, you still want to teach, then it should be easier.”

Biting at his lip, Bucky looked down at the table. “I don’t like just sitting at home, you know that, Steve.”

“Yeah, I know. And you don’t have to. Volunteer at the collegiate, if you want. Or hang around the café. Do some shopping. _Rest_ , because scragg knows you don’t do that normally. Especially if your arm’s coming in tomorrow, you’ll need time to adjust to it.” Finishing off his plate, he smiled at Bucky. “Tasted awesome, as always. Maybe you could become a chef. Restaurants lost a good resource in you when you joined the Imperial Army.”

Bucky snorted, but his shoulders relaxed, tension draining away. “And the Imperial Army lost a sizeable investment and smart tactician when you bought out your contract and left.”

Steve clamped down on his muscles to keep himself from flinching or shuddering the way he wanted to. “You know why. Scragg, you know everything about that. It would never have worked. Peggy proved that.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I dunno. Regrets, I guess. Had been looking forward to having you around, and by the time I figured out you’d bought out your contract, my contract had already been called up.”

For a long while, there was nothing but silence, and Steve poked at his food.

“Too serious a conversation,” Bucky said suddenly, standing up. “C’mon. You’ve got two strong arms and I’ve only got one; you’ve got to wrestle the mattress onto the bed for me.”

Later that night, after they’d gotten the study set up with sheets and Bucky’s stuff – Steve had been amazed at the amount of work Bucky had managed to get done – Steve laid in bed and stared at the ceiling.

He had thought he’d been dealing fine. He’d moved on from Peggy, accepted for the most part that he would never be a killer, and was fine with that, really he was. But with Bucky here, staring Bucky’s military record in the face, thinking about Clint who had been willing to apply to the Imperial Army until his application to the Aristocratic Guard had been accepted.

 _It’s not weird that I don’t want to date right now_ , he thought to himself, rolling over to glare at the wall. _It’s just my choice. Who cares that it’s been two years? That’s not that long of a time._

But he remembered his instinctive freeze whenever anyone talked about him dating, his uncomfortable shifting when someone tried to hit on him when he was out with his friends. He remembered the nightmares that visited him at least once a month, and the way he avoided any exercise beyond running now.

Maybe Clint and Bucky were right. Maybe he should start thinking about dating again, and try to put his past behind him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_< dun think u kan ignore forevr i no wear live u>_

Steve squinted at the message on his portable reader, trying to make heads or tails of it. He had woken up early, as he had the late morning shift that Sharon normally took, though Bucky was still snoring. Steve was considering asking for the earlier shifts as he was much more awake in the morning and preferred to have his evenings for himself, and had gone into the kitchen to get himself something quick to eat before he jogged to the library, and his portable reader had had this message flashing on the front screen.

Tapping the screen to unlock the electronic, he reread the message and tried to figure out what it meant. Why would this guy think Steve was ignoring—

Frowning, he exited the message and, sure enough, there was his messages cache, with seventeen new messages waiting.

With a sigh, Steve clicked the open and read them chronologically. Whether it was because he was a sucker for punishment or he had a weakness for idiots (look at Bucky and Clint, after all), he didn’t know. (He was deliberately ignoring the possibility that he was becoming _fond_ of this mystery guy who wouldn’t leave him alone. Especially when he only had a single, hasty, _rude_ conversation with this guy last night while at work.)

_< k im bak n don u lik cheezburgr? i lik cheez burgrs 2 amazin tigns burgrs.>_

_< du u not lik burgrs thn? wht kind of merica citizn not lik burgrs thts lik a crime againt merican cultur>_

_< mbbe do lik brgrs. w shud gt burgrs.>_

_< ppr tlls me u name steve. hi steve.>_

_< ppr also tlls me i shud leav u alon but i think we rlly had gud tiem taklin erlier we shud moar tak.>_

_< its mornin now u can talk right u hav work today ppr tells me n ill bothr u gan we gun be best frinds i now it>_

_< ok mayb not teknikly mornin but i can sleep what mad u mov to little castkill cant be nethng good bc catskill middl bumfuc nowher i shud now thats why i choose it>_

_< do u lik piza bc we cn du piza if u don lik brugr tho y u no lik burgr i cant undestan it must b crime r sumtin>_

_< ppr thnks we shud meet but we shud fiht the systim no 1 tells us wht to do ppr is intefering buzybody>_

_< but no srsly u do want 2 meet bc if u do we can if u wan jus think we talk good wit each oter>_

_< its mornin now for real u must b up right?>_

_< ppr can be intimidating>_

_< sunrise of my eye ur not ignorin me r u y wud u do such a thing?>_

_< ppr says i cant fors u 2 tak 2 me but ar frindshp cant b brokin by jalus pprs!>_

_< u R ignoring me rnt u?>_

_< no relly did i offnd u bc i am sorry i dun meen haf whut i say>_

_< steeeeeve>_

Steve found himself grinning at the end of it, even with how ridiculous the messages were. Even now, the messages flashed again, and Steve clicked it open to see _< ok mayb tht sound creepy so jus petend i didn say tht but u r frustratin ne1 tell u u frustratin steeeeve?>_

Before he could really think about it, Steve clicked open the respond feature and tapped out a message.

_< How did you find my contact information?>_

Within moments, his reader was flashing with one message, two, three, four, and Steve rolled his eyes and moved away from the reader, starting up the coffee and getting together a quick breakfast. Though he wasn’t as good a cook as Bucky, he still could cook up some egg substitute, fry bread in a pan, and boil a packet of noodles and sauce – a perfectly respectable breakfast, really.

Finally, the reader stopped flashing, and Steve let the water to boil as he drifted back over to the table, tapping open the messages to read the deluge.

_< steeeeve u replied i new we gonna bestest buds clos frends pals pees in ppod i new it ppr is a synikal lying lyrpants!>_

_< so do u aktuly lik burgrs r piza bettr?>_

_< brgurs all th way u now>_

_< if u don lik burgrs not sur i can trust u>_

_< ok thts not quiet tru but still how cn u no lik burgrs thier fukin nectr of th fuckin gods>_

_< oh u prolly not eatin burgrs right now u eatin breakfast most ppl eat brekfast at ths time so wht u eatin noodls? bred n eggs??>_

_< it dun matter how i got ur access point digits it really really dusnt>_

“Someone’s awfully chipper for coming home so late,” Bucky grumped as he made his way into the kitchen and slumped in a chair. “Spaceflak take it, why the flak did I agree to check out the collegiate so flak-taken early?”

“Coffee?” Steve asked, standing up from the table and grabbing one of the three mugs he owned.

The reader flashed again with another message and Bucky picked up the device. Steve let out an involuntary noise of dismay.

Raising an eyebrow at Steve, Bucky tapped open the screen and glanced at the message, and then, eyebrows furrowing, tapped again on the screen.

Steve resigned himself to Bucky’s actions long before Bucky lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at Steve.

“Steve, who is this guy? How did he get your information? Is he some stalker? How did you manage to score a stalker before you’ve been in town three days?”

Placing Bucky’s cup on the table in front of his right hand, Steve turned back to the now-boiling noodles and bubbling sauce. “He contacted the console I was sitting on last night, when I was at work. I don’t know how I got my information; if you looked at my message, you’d know that.”

Bucky laboriously tapped out a message. At the cooling unit, Steve narrowed his eyes and said pointedly, “Don’t you dare send him a message, Buck; what do you want to drink?”

Bucky stuck his tongue out at Steve and clicked send before Steve could snatch the reader back from him.

“What are you, still in secondary classes?” Steve huffed, grabbing the reader from Bucky’s hands, even as the reader flashed multiple times with return messages. “Drink your soy.”

“Yes, mother,” Bucky grumbled, but his eyes were bright and the corner of his mouth was twitching up in a smile.

Steve looked over the message history to see that Bucky had written _< who r u and y r u contacting steve?>_

And the mystery man had replied with _< who is THIS woh is wit my new frind hes my frind bak off who r u u don hav ne rit to qestin me>_

_< steve who is dis who taks ur stuff takl 2 me steeve>_

_< steeeve>_

_< who is dis??!?>_

Huffing, Steve served himself a plate and poured himself some soy milk before sitting down and typing out his reply.

_< That was my roommate, Bucky. He’s staying with me in my apartment. But he has a valid question – why are you contacting me?>_

There was a long wait after this, long enough that Steve was slinging his pack over his shoulder as he got ready to leave for work, reader jammed into his back pocket, when the return message flashed on the screen.

_< i thinnk we cud mayb b frinds?>_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Steve’s life began to fall into an easy pattern. He took the morning shift First-Day through Fourth-Day, had off Fifth-Day, and Sixth-Day to Eighth-Day he took the late shift, leaving his Ninth- and Tenth-Day free. Morning shifts had him helping out with the curriculum projects of the young students, helping them design projects they’d enjoy to study while satisfying the requirements of the class. About two weeks (and many, many messages later from the mystery guy, their conversations ranging from the political reality to classical movies to whether the organic trees outside the library were actually beech or birch) after his first day, Steve was finishing up his shift work with Sharon, getting ready to leave since Wagner had just come in, when he noticed that the kid, Parker, was curled up in a small nook, a holochip in his hands and his fingers flying over the holographic keyboard.

“Hey – Parker’s cohort got out of class two or three hours ago, right?” Steve asked Sharon.

With a nod as she finished clocking out, she replied, “They do, but if you’re talking about Parker, his aunt pulls a lot of shifts as a nurse and he doesn’t have anyone waiting at home. He lives here, for the most part – at least, until he’s ready to head out and go to a friend’s house.”

“Why not just head over to his friend, then?” Steve asked curiously. “Got to be more interesting than hunching over holographs.”

“His friend’s not always home; he comes and goes, and Parker heads off when he’s ready. I think Parker’s in the process of applying to jump through a couple of levels on the science and math tracks. He’s pretty good at those subjects, enough so that the dean is seriously considering it if he can score a seventy or higher on the projects.”

Steve let that sink in as he looked over the few chips in his hands. He knew that kids could skip levels on certain tracks – he knew Bruce, for one, had skipped two levels on every single track, moving himself up two cohorts into Steve, Bucky, and Clint’s. That had been part of the reason he’d been picked on, and why he became so defensive and his temper had gotten so out of control.

Steve had jumped a few levels himself; each cohort had a set project to complete through the school year for each track, and those projects had to score a seventy or higher in order to move onto the next level’s project for the track. The projects sometimes were very open and loose with their guidelines, and some, like the maths, were extremely restrictive and precise. There were, in general, seven tracks, though there were sub-tracks and elective tracks that could supplement the tracks if a student found they had the time to do more than seven large projects a school year. History, science, math, literature, language, physicality, and culture were the main tracks – then there were sub-tracks, like mythology, physics, geometrics, classical texts, the many different foreign languages, martial arts, and art (to name just a few). Parker had said he’d completed the life and natural sciences project – that was the general track project – as well as the mathematics (maths), physics (science), chem (science again) and bio-tech, which could be on the physicality or the science tracks, depending on the focus of the project. Parker obviously still needed to fulfill the history, literature, language, and culture tracks, and there was only half a year left; Steve would have to start pushing him harder. Even if his goal was jumping the science and math tracks, that didn’t mean he could fall behind in the other tracks.

Sharon left, and Kurt was currently focused on helping some collegiate students with their projects, so Steve manned the desk until Kurt came back, apologizing for keeping Steve. Steve didn’t matter – and he said as much – and then quickly punched out. He wanted to head home to Bucky, but he was curious as to what Parker was doing and saw no reason that he had to be home immediately.

“Hey, spiderlet,” he said softly, sitting down in a chair next to Parker’s niche.

Parker jumped, startled, and then settled down. “Hi there, Sir Rogers.”

Steve poked Parker’s foot.

With a smile, Parker canceled out the holograph and set the chip down. “I mean, Rogers,” he said, correcting himself, and then he crossed his legs and leaned forward. “Why’re you here?”

“Just wanted to say hi, you know,” Steve chided gently. “Also wanted to see what you’re working on.”

Parker started guiltily and looked down at the obviously not-mythology chip he had been pouring over. “I’m out of class, now, I don’t have to do classwork,” he said defensively.

“No, of course you don’t,” Steve said immediately. “It’s fine. I was just curious. How do you plan on doing four long projects before next school year? Even here, the school year’s in January, right?”

“Yeah,” Parker sighed. “But I have five months, still.”

Steve hummed a little and leaned back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling. “You know, I had a friend who skipped two levels on all tracks. Moved up two cohorts.”

“Really?” Parker said, voice eager. “He must’ve been really smart!”

“He was willing to do double the work, plus all the side projects for his chosen sub-tracks and electives,” Steve agreed, still looking up. “He pushed himself very hard. I’m not saying that it was wrong for him to do so – but it made it hard for him, in the long run. I want to see you have fun, too, you know?”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Parker said quietly, “I like math and science. It _is_ fun.”

“I’m sure it is, and if you really like it, then don’t even listen to me right now. But I know I had two close friends who I enjoyed being around, and I hope you have some good friends, too.”

Parker was silent for a long while, and Steve sat there, waiting. He was still the new teacher, the one that was still learning about the interpersonal relationships in the different cohorts, still learning to pick up on who were the students that shouldn’t sit together and who were the students that needed attention and help, and he knew that as a kid he himself had spent long hours in the library, pouring over the historical art chips and studying the different techniques used. He hadn’t been friendless, but none of the librarians had ever remarked on why a ten-year-old child preferred to stay in the library isles instead of playing outside before. He didn’t want to be ignorant or aloof in the way those librarians had been.

Finally, Parker murmured quietly, “I have one friend. I don’t need others.”

Steve winced. “Well,” he said, just as softly, “I hope I count as a friend?”

Parker crawled out of the little nook and stood beside Steve, and Steve tilted his head a little to look at Parker’s small smile. “I count you as a friend,” Parker said. “So, two friends.”

“We can go to the park, or the gymnasium, if you would rather. Staying cooped up in here can’t be fun all the time.”

“I’m gonna go to my friend’s house in a bit,” Parker said. “Maybe tomorrow?”

Steve nodded easily and stood up, putting his hand out to Parker. After a moment, Parker shook it. “If we’re going to be friends,” Steve said solemnly, “my name’s Steve.”

“Peter,” the little boy replied, and Steve found himself smiling back at the eager expression.

Later that evening, as he sat at the dining table, discussing the interaction with Bucky – who had just that morning received the bio-interface limb and was still trying to get a handle on it – Steve’s reader lit up with another message. Bucky shot it an annoyed look (he’d complained that Steve spent more time talking to his mystery man than Bucky, which made Steve blush and go on the defensive, and deliberately leave his reader in his room for a whole day last Tenth-Day to go with Bucky to the gymnasium, eat out, and go to the tainment-plex that was showing a new action setting), so Steve slid it to the side and continued talking about Parker.

“I’m just saying – I don’t want to pry, not too much, but I don’t want to leave the kid alone, you know? I knew I could always go to Sir Erskine if I needed to speak to someone.” Steve stared at his plate, a worried frown creasing his brow. “But I don’t want to make him feel like – like his choices are inadequate. I just want to make certain they are his choices and not him settling because he can’t have anything more.”

“You’re too soft-hearted, Steve,” Bucky sighed, making certain to keep his new arm very still so it didn’t twitch or jerk randomly – the neural relays were still adjusting. “Look, the kid is going to be okay. This isn’t Bruce, you know, or John, or Marie. Here, there’re more people to focus on him and care for him; in the city, there were too many kids in our state cohort for the state workers to notice the problems.”

Steve kept his eyes on his plate, still not completely satisfied. He didn’t want Parker feeling ignored or left out by the adults, ignored and kicked to the side.

Heaving another long sigh, Bucky stood up and clapped Steve on the shoulder with his flesh arm (apparently, he was still trying to calibrate the mechanical limb to keep it from exerting too much pressure on ordinary items – he’d already accidentally cracked a plate from gripping it too hard). “Let the kid come to you, and let the kid know you’re there if he wants to talk. That’s all you need to do.”

Steve nodded, and Bucky patted his shoulder before exiting the room.

Rubbing the back of his neck, Steve stabbed listlessly at the synth-meat. Bucky was right, of course, but Parker was a lot like Steve, only Steve had been focused on art instead of science. It made Steve worry more – especially when considering that his two best friends had also been bullied and cut out of the group, and while they acted like their little three-person group was enough, that didn’t change the fact that Steve knew how much it had hurt them when they had been continually rejected from their peers.

The reader flashed again, and Steve let out an annoyed huff. He really wasn’t in the mood for Mystery-Guy’s random and irritating messages, but he opened up the message box anyway.

_< peter tol me what u axed an im tankful u did tht liddl buddy nneds sum1 2 look outfor him adn i cant always b thre for him thank>_

Steve stared at the message a long moment, and then clicked on the next one.

_< kids can b crul>_

For a few heartbeats, Steve did nothing except stare at the screen. He wondered how Mystery-Guy knew that kids could be cruel, and wondered how Mystery-Guy knew Parker.

All of those, though, were questions for another day. He hesitated a minute more before typing out _< My pleasure.>_

Then he retreated into his rooms and, for once, had a dreamless sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You seem to be fitting in really well in this tiny place. Look really settled in for a month of being here. Not lost.”

Today was one of Steve’s two off-days, and nicely enough, it coincided with Bucky’s off-days. Nat had leave from the Army, and Clint had managed to get a visiting flight plan approved and switch around his off-days so he could drive up with Nat. They’d had a huge feast of a breakfast, put together by Bucky, and then had headed out to the tainment-plex for some VR games and V-activities. Now, as it was nearing the late afternoon, they were getting a late lunch and then Clint and Steve would hang out, letting Bucky and Nat have some quality time together at the apartment.

Steve stirred his caffe, adding sweetener, and ended up half-shrugging. “Well. It’s – friendly. Nice.”

“The fact that everyone keeps trying to set him up doesn’t hurt,” Bucky grunted into his fruit-blend.

The bluntness of Bucky’s words, and Bucky’s betrayal, had Steve inhaling his caffe the wrong way and coughing horribly as he tried to get his breathing under control.

“ _Really_?” Nat purred, leaning forward on her elbows, eyeing Steve with an unblinking, cool stare. Clint looked gleefully amused as well, lips pursed on the straw of his sugary concoction.

“Look, I don’t even – I don’t even know who it is they keep trying to set me up with,” Steve muttered, cheeks and tips of his ears going red. Though it seemed like everyone Steve met – from Thor, here in Fury’s shop, to Pepper, who mentioned it to Steve every three days or so, to Coulson, who grumbled that Steve might as well date the man if Steve was going to keep chatting with him late at night, to the group of high school students that keep asking him if he wanted them to introduce his Mystery-Guy to him, to Peter, who always gives him sidelong glances and dropped casual facts into their conversations, such as the fact that Mystery-Guy likes classical movies just like Steve or that Mystery-Guy appreciates ancient art the way Steve does.

Clint frowned and tapped a finger against the small table the four of them were crowded around. “You don’t know who it is?”

Bucky laughed, even as Steve hunched his shoulders and smiled sheepishly. “Not really,” Steve replied. “I mean, I know _about_ the guy. He started chatting with me the second day on my shift, bypassing the security on the work stations at the library, and we just… didn’t stop talking. But I’ve never seen a picture of him. I just know his first name is Tony.”

Humming to herself, Natasha takes a discreet slurp of her coffee-blend. After a moment, she clarified, “Everyone thinks you work well together? Even though you’ve never been together?”

“Pepper apparently knows him really well, and admits that he has problems but that they’ve gotten more manageable the longer he’s talked to me,” Steve sighed. “Peter swears up and down that Tony asks Peter about me at least once a day. Thor claims that Tony needs a steady, dependable head and I need someone to loosen me up. _Everyone_ I know has mentioned how I could do well for him, and he could do well for me.”

“Well, why don’t you set up a date? Though I gotta admit, Steve, you seemed so fixated on Peggy back in the city, I didn’t know your sexuality was as fluid as it seems.” Clint tilted his head at the door, watching as more people walked in. Steve twisted in his chair to see Coulson and another man, dark-skinned and tall, burly and powerful, with the distinctive walk of an Army man, if not a Black Widow, enter the café.

Looking away from them, Steve furrowed his brow at Clint and pointed at him warningly. “Leave Peggy out of this, okay? I’m – trying to leave the past in the past.”

“You aren’t still blaming yourself over that, are you?” Nat demanded, looking away from Bucky to pin Steve with an angry glare. “Steve, you said you were talking to a soul-healer about her passing on and your situation.”

Steve’s shoulders tightened and he unconsciously straightened, eyes going dark. “Nat, leave it be.”

“Steve—”

“Steve, how are you?”

Their conversation as interrupted by Coulson, who was standing at Steve’s shoulders, looking mildly interested. Then again, Coulson never looked more than mildly interested, so Steve shoved his anger back behind old walls and forced a smile.

“Coulson, these are my cohort-friends; you know Bucky, and this is Nat, his spousal partner, and Clint, our good friend. They’re visiting for the day.”

Coulson nodded solemnly to Natasha and Clint. “Sir Phil Coulson,” he introduced himself. “Steve’s boss. Speaking of, you should take them around the library – Pepper and Kurt are on shift, and Kurt’s got some friends of his own hanging out from the capital district. Not NYC, but pretty good city in any case.”

Steve looked back at his friends, not sure what answer to give – he knew Bucky and Nat had plans, and Clint didn’t find the libraries to be the sanctuary that Steve had – but Clint was leaning back in his chair, smiling lazily at Coulson. “Will you be there, handsome?” Clint drawled.

Steve kicked Clint’s shin.

Coulson blinked once at Clint before letting a cool smile curl at the corners of his mouth. “Does that line work often for you?” he asked.

“I don’t know – did it work?” Clint countered.

With a groan, Steve dropped his head against the table, even as Nat snickered and Bucky shook with suppressed laughter.

Coulson’s smile grew more pronounced, even as he murmured, “Bring him around the library, Steve – Sharon would get a kick out of him. C’mon, Rhodes, we ought to grab the order and go. Don’t like leaving him alone for so long.”

“He’s not alone, though,” Coulson’s companion – Rhodes, Coulson had called him – murmured. “Obadiah’s with him.”

Coulson didn’t answer, merely moved to the counter and tapped his credit chip against the port before Fury handed him a box. Nodding to Steve, Coulson exited the shop, the taller man trailing behind him.

“That’s your boss?” Clint asked in surprise. “He looks – really amazing, actually.”

“We all know,” Nat said disdainfully, digging a finder sharply into Clint’s side and making him yelp. “You made that abundantly clear.”

Clint grinned lewdly, and Bucky snickered as he patted Steve’s back. “Hey, I was happy just kicking the little scragg’s ass, you’re the one who felt sorry for him.”

Steve glared at Clint, but there was no real heat in it. With a sigh, he stood up and tapped his credit chip to the port at their table, closing off their bill. “C’mon, Clint. We might as well go hang out there before heading over to the tainment-plex again. We’ll see you guys in about three hours, alright?”

Natasha smiled warmly at Steve. “Thanks, Rogers. You’ve a good heart, if a bit too stubborn mind-set for my tastes.”

“What is this, gang up on Steve day?” Steve grumbled, hauling Clint up by the back of his shirt and dragging him out the door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was about a month later, Steve really fitting into his work and Bucky growing more confident with his arm, that Pepper stopped by the table where Steve and Peter were working together on finishing up Peter’s mythology project and adding some research to Peter’s art project. School had let out for Peter, per the norm, and Peter had come over to the library to work on his projects with Steve – and Steve made sure to sit with him in the last hour of his shift, after completing his other duties and leading the other classes. Pepper was filing – Kurt and Sharon were working with the current cohort, and both Pepper and Steve were waiting for their shift to end – and she normally left them alone. Coming over like this had Steve looking at her curiously.

“I think maybe you should take Parker over to Tony’s when you get off work.”

Steve’s look turned from curiosity to suspicion, while Peter’s shifted to exultation. “Why?” Steve asked, already fearing the answer. After all, once Peter had learned that Mystery-Guy, who made Steve’s reader buzz in his pocket, was Peter’s friend “Tony,” he’d been harping after Steve to meet with this mysterious man. Sharon had dropped into conversations the idle remark that Steve ought to finally meet up with ‘Mystery-Guy’ – rather, Tony – for a proper date instead of all this flirting. Pepper had been after him more than once about meeting up for a cup of fruit-blend or caffe in Fury’s shop, or going to the local tainment-plex together. Even Coulson (who was suspiciously interested in Clint the week after Clint left) and Kurt jokingly remarked, more than once, that Steve should meet up with Tony.

Steve was not to be disappointed, for the first thing Pepper said was, “Come _on_ , Steve – you are deliberately freezing out a guy that I know you’re interested in! You light up when his messages appear and you talk about your discussions with him whenever there’s any downtime. You’re obviously smitten. Why won’t you make any moves?”

“You _do_ like him?” Peter chirped, sounding ecstatic.

Steve ended up hunching his shoulders, not looking at either of them, and mumbling, “Look, I just – I keep thinking I’m ready to date and I’m just not, okay?”

“No one’s asking you two to become spousal partners,” Peter pointed out all-too logically. “Just meet with one another.”

Pepper didn’t say anything, just stood there silently, and that felt worse, in a way. Steve swallowed hard.

Peggy… he was trying to let go of the past, he really was. It was difficult to accept that he couldn’t have changed a thing – that that part of his life was over, and always would be, and they had both made the best decisions they could at the time being. He felt… disloyal, to open up to another. To allow another into his heart, or even momentarily into his head, where she sat enshrined.

But Peter and Pepper were looking at him expectantly. Literally every single people who heard about him chatting with Tony via reader told him that they should go for it, it’d be worth it. How he’d not met this mysterious Tony yet was a mystery in and of itself, especially considering that, with what everyone was trying to convince Steve, someone could have just dragged Tony into the library one day and shoved him at Steve.

Then again, in their messages back and forth, Steve had specified that he didn’t want to meet up yet – and Tony had asked. Multiple times. Maybe everyone was waiting on Steve because he was the only one still not one hundred percent sure of this.

And the reason he wasn’t one hundred percent sure was because of a woman lost to him two years ago.

Swallowing hard, he turned to Peter and offered a weak grin. “Well, okay. If Sir Parker doesn’t object to my escort, I don’t see why not.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “I’ve been trying to get you guys in the same room for two whole _weeks_ now, why would I object?”

Gently bopping the youth on the head, Steve lifted his eyes to frown at Pepper. His frown didn’t move her at all. “Good,” she said instead, nodding decisively. “That way you can either get on with dating him or you can turn him down and end it before you or him gets any more invested in this.”

“That’s comforting,” Steve grunted.

“Wasn’t meant to be,” she responded airily, walking off with a stack of data chips. For a long minute, Steve physically considered throwing his stylus at her head.

He turned to see Peter watching him with gleaming eyes and realized a good role model didn’t throw tantrums in the library. Clearing his throat, he set down the stylus carefully on the desktop – to Peter’s disappointment – and pointed at the revolving holograph. “Come on. We’re almost done this one, and you’ve got quite a bit more subjects to go. If we get this done we can move on to art, or start your language.”

Peter groaned and slumped over his console theatrically. “Can’t we just go?” he whined. “Sir Coulson will let you leave early.”

“No, I’ve still got time on the clock. And you, Sir Parker, have got more to complete before you’re done your mythology project.”

They worked together for the next half-hour, and then Steve got up (with stern directions from Peter to hurry up his closing routine so they could go) and made his way back to the desk. Pepper had gotten off shift, but Sharon was sitting there, smirking at him.

His stomach sank.

“Soooo…” she purred, “I hear the legendary meet-up is upon us?”

“Why is everyone in this space-taken town so obsessed with my love life?” Steve grumbled, slinking behind the desk to close out his workstation and console.

Sharon leaned forward, hand propped up on her chin. “Because you’d be amazing with him?”

He gave her a disgusted look.

“Right, that’s a pretty shallow and creepy reason. But it’s true, you know? Since you started talking with him, he’s gotten a lot better. Pepper isn’t being harassed by him daily, the way she was before. And you’re good with Parker, and Parker’s practically his adopted nephew, Parker’s aunt is happy that both he and Parker are eating better, Coulson doesn’t have ulcers from his attempts to ‘help’ Pepper by, say, painting the staff quarters purple and red again, and you kinda act as a handler for him already, you know, calming him down and making him think before he does something ridiculous and stupid again. And you – you looked so tired when you first came. And yeah, maybe that was from the city or whatever, but you’ve gotten a lot brighter and happier. So we’re just seeing two people who make each other’s lives amazing and we say, ‘go for it!’ We’re your little cheerleaders!”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Steve asked, standing up and putting his hands on his hips. “When we don’t like each other, and we consciously avoid one another? What happens then?”

“Then, well…” Sharon shrugged. “Then we wish it didn’t happen, and we try to console you guys, and then other people who’ve been looking for a chance to get some action with you will try and Tony will just retreat again. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Steeeve!”

Steve turned to see Peter leaning on the counter, frowning at him. With a sigh, he moved out from behind the desk and into the staff quarters. A quick stop by his locker and then the time-clock, and then he was out in front of the desk and taking Peter’s hand. “Well. See you tomorrow – no, I have off tomorrow. See you Sixth-Day!”

“Go have some fun, Steve!” Sharon called back, smiling.

Peter waited until they were clear of the library’s ground floor and out the building when he finally asked, in a small voice, “If you really don’t want to see him, you don’t have to walk me over, you know. Bucky’s back from the garage, I’m sure.”

“No, Peter – it’s fine. Really. I’m just – I just don’t like the pressure. I don’t like the idea that the whole town is staring at us, waiting for us to kiss in public or something.” Steve ran a hand through his hair, scrubbing roughly at his nape.

There was a bit more silence as Peter walked quietly beside Steve down the street. Steve didn’t say anything more, and instead let Peter lead the way to wherever this Tony’s house was.

“You, um. Well. I just really think you two like each other, you know? So maybe it’d be cool if you actually met one another.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve said, awkward. “We could – discuss how he became your friend? We could do that.”

Peter didn’t seem happy with the conversation switch, but he went along with it well enough, tilting his head up at Steve. “What did you want to know?”

Steve cast his mind about for an appropriate lead-in question, as Peter tugged him down a diagonal street that would lead them further from the center of the city. “Do you always go over to his house?” Steve finally asked. He was following Parker, of course, because he had no idea where the house was (and even now, a few months into living in this city, the fact that it was a house and not a level in an apartment building or skyscraper boggled the mind; how rich did you have to be to have an actual _house_ ) and wandering around the edges of the city never was good. The edges of the city were normally where the back-up generators, the police barracks, the auxiliary services, waste-recycling units, and other extraneous services needed to support life within the city. There was also some real scenery there – it was a popular field trip site for a lot of schools – and in a small city like this, with some original houses dotting even the normal streets, nestled between the multi-storied buildings, it made sense that there would be houses on the edges of the city, just inside the walls.

Peter nodded, hopping from one leg to the other in a complicated pattern that only made sense to him. “Yeah, he’s pretty cool. Like – that crazy uncle no one wants to admit lives near you. He’s super-smart. Taught a bit at the library, some engineering classes.”

“Is he always home?” Steve pressed. Maybe the guy was a hermit? And the small city wanted him to get out more… but that wouldn’t make sense, for him to need a handler, would it? Handler implied someone to mitigate interactions with other people… and remembering Tony’s statements via their messages, he could imagine the guy needing someone to act as a middle-man to smooth ruffled feathers. Tony was brash and in your face and completely convinced of his own superiority.

Lifting one shoulder in a half shrug, Peter shook his head. “Not always. But I can always hang at his house if I want. My dad was a good friend of his – I found Tony’s name in my father’s stuff, and contacted him. He invited me over for pizza.”

“Does your aunt get… worried at all?” Steve asked. He knew he was probably treading dangerously close to territory Peter wouldn’t be comfortable with, but it sounded very much like this kid just wandered the expanse of the city without any supervision at all. That seemed… ludicrous.

Peter narrowed his eyes at Steve. “’Course she gets worried. She’s not _stupid_. But everyone looks out for everyone else, here. She knows I won’t get into too much trouble. And I take the long way usually, through the factory district. Flash and his friends rarely go there because it stinks.”

“Flash and his friends?”

“Uh-huh. Flash and his friends think they’re this ace-mode gang, and they’re really, really not, but there are more of them than me. Harry’s dad never lets Harry come play with me, but some of the best rocks and insects live in the Edge. I like to go there. Sometimes Gwen and Mary Jane hang with me, if their parents say they can. It’s cool. The cohort’s pretty big, but that’s because of Relocation, not because of how many families live here in the city. We know pretty much everyone by sight. And Flash and his friends hang around the base of the mountain, so instead of going straight to Tony’s house I kinda go at it from the side and walk through the factory districts. But we can walk straight. We _are_ walking straight.”

They were, at that. Since all cities were built like wheels, with the streets acting as spokes, they had taken the northern road, crossed a diagonal to the north-east road, and followed it all the way to where the multi-storied buildings had died out and there were just one or two houses on either side of the road. Grass – organic, actually, not the non stuff that seemed to be too soft to really be grass – was along the edge, and there were more organic trees here. Bushes, too. It was like a nature preserve, or a piece of time that was untouched by the radioactive wars. Steve looked at it in interest, even as the ground started sloping up.

Catskill was based by the mountains, he remembered. Big mining place, with some agricultural output and alloy-refinement.

Up ahead, there were noises of kids laughing and playing. They turned the corner to see some of the eighth and seventh cohort kids fooling around a—

“Is that a – a _lake_?” Steve gasped.

“Man-made, but yeah,” Peter said easily. “It’s a pretty good hangout. Not that we’re allowed to be here without adult supervision.” He squinted his eyes at Steve, as if judging whether Steve was going to tattle. “Tony built it. He thought the kids should have some fun.”

“If Tony built it for you,” Steve began, and the first name was awkward on his tongue, “why do you need adult supervision?”

“Because the mayor, Sir Xavier, he says he doesn’t want kids to drown.”

Well, that made sense, at least. Steve stared at the as-close-to-natural-lake-as-possible and shook his head. “Maybe I’ll bring Bucky out here.”

“Was Bucky in the Army? Is that how he lost his arm?”

Finding it was his turn to talk, Steve began to talk about Bucky’s military service, his time growing up – even small anecdotes about what he, Bucky, and Clint would get up to while they were running wild around the third or fourth levels in their ward-district.

“The city sounds really big and not very nice,” Peter said, voice thoughtful.

Steve hitched a shoulder. “You get a lot of opportunities there. There are always things going on. But for kids? It was very dangerous. Here, you dodge adult supervision and the worst that can happen is, what, falling out of a tree? Drowning? Which, okay, that is pretty bad, but still. In the city it’s… not as forgiving.”

As they had been walking, the grey walls of the city had come into stark view. Ever since the radioactive wars that left only two surviving regimes, the Imperial Empire and the Sultanate, it was dangerous to go out of cities unless you were heavily suited up in protective gear. The walls generated a force-field type shield that kept the temperature and climate of the city fairly regular, with scattered bits of ‘wilder’ weather such as showers, wind, or a crisp chill. All of it manufactured, of course; that was the purpose of the hub, after all. Sentry towers were spaced evenly around the circumference and all were an equal distance from the hub; the shield was generated by the hub and the sentry towers bolstered it. It was part of the reason why the libraries were so heavily shielded; libraries were always attached to schools. Back in the day, there had been serious anarchist threat to the hubs of major cities, and the Imperial Governing Body decided to create back-up plans in the libraries. Should the radiation shield fall, anyone in the city could go to the library – once entering the outer shell, there were nanobots that could be released to de-radiate or at least mostly cleanse you of the radiation, and then entering the inner shell you were as protected within there as you would be behind the radiation shield.

But all of that was secondary; Steve had only ever seen the walls of a city twice before – once when he was actually leaving New York City to come to Catskill, and the second time was when he entered Catskill. To think that in small cities like this you could literally walk along the very edge, run a hand on the smooth steel-alloy metal that was lead-based with lead plating, walk around the entirety of the city all in one day…

There were trees, of course, all organic here, and even some birds singing. Steve stared in wonder at the contrast; the future and the past, meshed against one another, coexisting in the harsh climate of the day.

“Are you coming?”

Steve turned to see that Peter had stepped down a side path and was bouncing on his toes, impatient. With a small smile, Steve turned and followed Peter down the path until, around a bend in the road, the house came into view.

Though calling it a house was highly misleading.

“Who’s Tony again?” Steve asked faintly, staring up at the huge, sprawling manor, a crest on the gates. “And how does he live in a house like this? Aristocrats don’t stay in small towns like this.”

“Well, Tony does,” Pter huffed, even as he moved up to the double doors and pressed the small button on the right.

“Welcome, young sir. Who is your companion?”

“Hi, Jar! This is Sir Steve Rogers; he walked me today. Is Tony in?”

“Sir is in the lab with company, but he is on his way to greet you and your – companion. Do you wish to wait in the foyer?”

“Sure, thanks Jar!” Peter said happily, and the two doors swung inwards silently.

Inside, the manor was something out of a magazine; wooden walls with sloping lines, a spiraling staircase that led both to a lower and upper level, famous paintings on the walls and lush carpets beneath their feet. What appeared to be a living room was to the right, a large room that looked like a miniature library and study to the left.

“Peter? You’re early, aren’t you?”

The voice was coming from the lower level, and Steve glanced over to see scruffy hair and a face covered with stubble popping up from the stairs to lock onto Peter. “Pepper with you—”

The man stopped, even as two men came up behind him, one an insanely tall man, stout and bald, fair with steely eyes, and the other the dark man – _Rhodes_ , Steve’s mind supplied the name – from Fury’s shop with Coulson.

This must be Tony, Steve figured, and just as he was about to introduce himself, Tony came all the way up the stairs and Steve’s head spun. He’d recognize those features anywhere. There was no way he would forget the features of Howard Stark, the man who had thought he could fix Steve and ended up breaking him even more.

Tony. Tony _Stark_. Building a lake. Living next to the walls. With this ridiculously expensive house. Needing a handler. Being ridiculously good at hacking into things. Somehow, everything and nothing makes sense, and Steve just stares and stares as the other two men stare suspiciously at him.

This is, this is _Tony Stark_ , darling of the aristo class, right-hand man of the Emperor’s three years ago, kidnapped recently, disappeared from the tabloids and media. No one had known where he’d gone, what he was doing. His company was doing just fine; his father’s close friend, Obadiah Stane, handled the day-to-day issues and led the board. Actually, now that Steve could look past Tony – not Tony, not the bad-typing and worse-grammar Tony, this was _Stark_ – (though it was hard to do so, hard to not feel betrayed in some way) the bald man behind him was probably Obadiah Stane.

If Steve turned around and called the reporters in the city, right now, they’d descend here looking for a picture, an interview, an explanation to how Stark had gotten free from his kidnappers. They’d pay Steve for the tip, a huge amount of money. They’d never leave Stark alone.

“Who’s this, Pete?” Tony – _Stark_ – asked, and his hands and arms were filthy, he was wearing a white undershirt and sweat pants, and his chest… glowed. His hair was wild and matted with what looked like oil, he had dark circles under his eyes, and he was barefoot. He looked perfect and touchable and Steve itched to draw him even as he itched to turn around and run out of the house.

“This is Sir Steve Rogers; you know, the new librarian? Pepper asked him to walk me home.”

“Pepper is a traitorous traitor and if I didn’t need Happy I’d send him to Alpha Prime to keep Pepper mine forever,” Stark said, and though his voice was absent and casual, his eyes were worried and hopeful all at once.

 _This_ was who Pepper – and Sharon, and, scragg, everyone, apparently – thought Steve was compatible with? This was the guy that had chatted so easily with Steve off and on for the past three months? This aristo, with more money than he knew what to do with and the playboy of the aristo class? Steve wanted to be more than a romp in the sheets, and he wanted more than Howard Stark’s son, heir to Howard’s blood-stained legacy. Clearing his throat, he offered his hand to Stark. “Aro Stark. I apologize; I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy. I just didn’t want Peter to walk alone.”

“You a fan of pizza?” Stark said off-hand, turning towards the living room area, Parker trailing behind him.

“Um. I really need to go; I have a friend staying over who doesn’t know where I am at the moment, and you have company,” Steve said hastily. “Maybe another time?”

Stark’s eyes were narrowed, but his smile was still in place as he shrugged his shoulders easily. “Sure, another time. Nice to meet you, Sir Rogers.”

Steve ducked his head in respect and exited the house. Manor. With the Stark crest spread across the double doors.

Space _takeit_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re back later than I expected,” Bucky called out. “In the kitchen.”

Steve leaned against the wall and took a deep breath in before moving into the kitchen, where Bucky was carefully trying to use his mechanical limb for the complex movements required for cooking. When Bucky looked up, though, he frowned. “You okay? You’re horribly pale and a lot more winded than I expected you to be from a simple shift at the library, unless you stopped by the rec on the way home – but you didn’t, ‘cause you left your rec pass on the table there. Did the little monsters run you ragged today?”

“I met Tony Stark.”

For a minute, Bucky just stared at him. “You’ve – you’ve got to be kidding, right?”

Steve shook his head no.

“Tony – _Stark_? Head of SI and on the board of the Interstellar Trade Commission? Weapons producer and guy who used to be head war advisor to the Emperor? The guy who was kidnapped a while back?” Bucky’s voice grew more and more incredulous with each sentence, and at the end, he paused thoughtfully. “I didn’t even know he’d gotten free from the kidnappers, actually. Was that a Black Widow operation or something?”

“My coworkers think I should date him.”

“Wait – _what_?” Bucky yelped. “How the hell did they jump to that? You’ve—” Bucky stopped and his eyes got really wide. “Is – is that they guy you’ve been talking with _this whole time_? Why didn’t you _tell_ me?!”

“ _I didn’t know!_ ” Steve snarled, and then he closed his eyes and visibly tried to calm himself down. After a few deep breaths, he ran a hand through his hair nervously. He’d practically run the whole way back and he was regretting it, first because it was undignified, and second because it looked as if he had been running away from Stark and – and he _hadn’t_.

But it was hard to look at the son and not see the father. It was hard to look at Stark and not think of Peggy.

Bucky came over and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Hey, buddy, you okay? Look, I’m sure you won’t have to deal with him. If no one’s seen him recently, he’s got to stay in his place and not leave, right? Where did you meet him?”

“I was – walking a sixth year to his place. Remember Peter, the kid I got interested in photographical artistry? Apparently Stark babysits. Or something. This kid, really bright in mathematics and the hard sciences, he goes over to Stark’s place every day, I guess.”

“Wow,” Bucky murmured, tugging Steve in and sitting him down at the dining room table before going back to trying to wrestle synth-meat and spliced vegetables into the stewpot in awkward, jagged chunks. Clearly, cutting up the meat and the vegetables had proved challenging with his mechanical limb, but Steve didn’t care about that right now. He was still trying to move past the fact that he had met Tony _Stark_ and not only that, but Stark had offered to let him stay for pizza.

“Oh, god, I’m an idiot,” Steve groaned, flopping over and letting his head thunk against plastic table.

Dropping the last pieces of meat and vegetables into the pot, Bucky turned to cock his head at Steve. “Well, I’m not really going to argue, but why are you calling yourself an idiot again?”

“He offered for me to stay to eat, and I told him I needed to get home. Oh, god, I probably pissed him off. He looked… off. Wild. Almost like a feral animal, come to think of it…” Steve lifted his head off the table and stared gloomily at the pattern. “Peter seemed safe enough with him, though. And he did have other guests over.”

Bucky came over to the table and sat down across from Steve, catching Steve’s attention briefly. “Well, look at the bright side. You’re probably never going to see him again, unless you walk that kid, and you don’t have to do that. It’s perfectly acceptable to not do that, you know. Kid’s been walking on his own before you came, he can keep on. And you can just stop talking to him via messaging.”

With a weak smile, Steve rubbed the back of his neck and stared back down at the table again. “Yeah, but…” Steve trailed off. He had _liked_ conversing with Tony. They had long talks about social issues, responsibility to others, everything from art to gossip to silly topics like day-programs. Heaving a sigh, Steve got up to pull out two energy drinks. “Anyway. How was work today? Anything interesting happen?”

“Nothing much,” Bucky said, accepting the subject change. “There’s a few kids having trouble in my class, but it’s nothing they can’t handle, and I think the dean of the collegiate likes having me around. Fury’s dropped by a couple of times, as has Betsy. She sometimes spars with me, getting me back into shape. Helping me get used to this arm. It still lags like scut.”

 “Sure, yeah.” Steve smiled. “Let me make some rice for the stew? Sit down, get some rest. You called the doctors about your arm yet? Get them to check out that lag?”

“Old Man Rogers,” Bucky grumbled, but his eyes were soft. “I’ll contact them tomorrow.”

The rice was simple to make, and Steve dished out two bowls before sitting down across from Bucky and picking disconsolately at his food. A few more minutes passed until Bucky heaved a sigh. “Look… you can always give him a chance. He’s not like his dad – and he’s been pretty wrapped up in you since the start. Contacted you first, right?”

“Let’s just – not talk about it,” Steve murmured. “You know, I’m really not that hungry.”

Bucky gave him a wounded look, but Steve really couldn’t muster the appetite to complete his meal. Standing up, Steve placed his food in the storage unit and made his way to his room.

When his reader buzzed, he ignored the message.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next morning, there were a slew of messages on his reader – messages he dismissed and continued to ignore as he moved around the apartment. He had the day off, which meant he could hide in here and lick his wounds.

Of course, that was exactly when Bucky came out of his room, saw Steve standing there staring at the cup of juice in his hand, and proclaimed that they were going to go to Fury’s shop for a decent breakfast since Bucky didn’t want to cook anything.

“Bucky, I don’t think I’m good company at the moment,” Steve resisted. “I’d really rather not.”

“If you sit in the house, you’re going to brood and scowl and impose doom upon the surroundings. I’ve got work in the afternoon, but we can still hang out in the morning and you can try and talk your way through the relationship problems you’ve been having,” Bucky pointed out.

Steve growled under his breath. “I’m not having any relationship problems.”

Bucky snickered and pushed at Steve to get his shoes on and grab his identification cards and credit chip. “C’mon, Steve. Let’s try to relax a bit.”

After a heartbeat’s hesitation, Steve relented and let Bucky herd him out the door.

They walked down the road, just watching the children make their way to school. Bucky took on the onus of being the conversationalist this morning, and Steve mentally thanked Bucky for just chatting about the garage and the craft he was fixing up with his coworkers. It gave him something else to think about than the reader that he’d left at home because he’d woken up to thirty-eight new messages, all of which he’d dismissed.

It wouldn’t work out between them. Steve was damaged, Tony was an aristo; they _weren’t_ going to work out. They _weren’t_.

Fury looked up as they entered the door, frowning at Bucky. “Haven’t seen you around in a while, Barnes,” he growled. “You been keeping yourself busy? Productive?”

Bucky eased himself into a chair at the counter, nodding his head to a few of the regulars he and Steve had grown to know in the past couple of months. The regulars nodded back, no longer interested in staring at the new immigrants. Most of Bucky and Steve’s surprises and background were known to the gossips. It made for a quieter morning now than it had in the beginning, which Steve was greatly thankful for.

“Look at it this way,” Bucky murmured into his caffe. “You didn’t turn to drink this time.”

“Why thank you, Bucky, I’m glad I have you to point out the silver lining,” Steve growled.

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve, an alien anger in the back of his eyes. “Just trying to be optimistic, you know. No need to jump down my throat about it.”

With a hard swallow, Steve dropped his gaze. “Sorry, Buck,” he murmured. “I – I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Huffing, Bucky kicked his leg into Steve’s shin, making Steve wince. “Shut up, you don’t need to be sorry. Just – look, it sucks that it turned out to be someone you don’t like, but there are other people. I’ve taken you to mixers before in this town, and we can always take my craft down to NYC one afternoon and just crash at Clint’s place, go to a mixer there. Get drunk, drive back late the next afternoon.”

As Steve was about to respond, the front door opened, and that man – Rhodes – strode in, talking softly to someone behind him. That someone strode into the shop behind Rhodes, and Steve found himself staring at Tony Stark.

Steve stiffened, and Bucky, noticing the change, turned to see Stark and his eyebrows went up. Today, Stark wasn’t in an undershirt and sweats; he was in a snappy suit and tie, with sunfilters over his eyes as he chatted with everyone around him as he made his way to the front. Fury already had a steaming cup on the counter and Stark grabbed it greedily, drinking down half the cup before turning to study Steve and Bucky. Steve really hoped that Stark wasn’t too upset about Steve’s refusal of a meal last night.

“You’re Rogers’ roommate, right? Sir Rogers, I met you. I haven’t met your friend.”

Steve wasn’t entirely certain what Stark was playing at, but Stark was aristocracy and Steve was common stock, and it wasn’t as if Steve was allowed to ignore Stark. Stiffly, he inclined his head at Bucky. “This is my good friend, James Barnes.”

“Missing something, aren’t you?” Stark said casually, and Bucky’s lips tightened even as Steve clenched his fists, making as if to rise. Stark continued on as if he didn’t notice their anger. “That bio-interface is a piece of scragg. All bio-interface limbs are horrendous. Ghastly pieces of tech. Drop by my place; I’ve got something light-years ahead of time. I’ll specialize it to your arm if you hang out for a while, let me tinker with the neural inter-relays. Tech’s my specialty, after all.”

Steve’s teeth ground audibly. Knowing Steve’s newfound opinion of Stark, Bucky eyed Steve a moment and then smiled uncertainly at Stark. “Thanks, but I don’t think—” Bucky began.

Turning away from Bucky, Stark cocked his head at Steve and studied him even as his mouth ran at high-speed. “Look, I guess we got off on the wrong foot somehow, but I’ll be dropping in and out of the library, since I have some more free time to work in the collegiate labs. Seeing you around is pretty much a given in a town this size in any case. And you’re always welcome to walk Peter over if you want, or any of his friends, and I’ll be sure to keep out of your way. Sometimes I might not be around – business trips you know; I have a slaver of a figurehead – but JARVIS will always let you in, and you don’t even have to see me if I am there. When I’m not there, you’re welcome to stick around with Peter – the kid really likes you. And Barnes can come over, too, though I don’t want you bumming around because you’re bored, Fury gets pissed enough at me as it is. In any case, great to finally meet you, Barnes, great to see you all, hey Thor!”

“Good morn, Stark!”

Thor’s voice, as always, was booming, and – surprised – Steve nearly jumped out of his seat. Bucky struggled to keep his face straight.

“Get outta here, Stark, you’re disrupting my business. Like always,” Fury growled.

Stark grinned, eyes warm. “Aw, sugarplum, you say the sweetest things. Until tomorrow!” With that, he turned on his heel and strode easily out of the door.

Steve sat in stunned silence as the café continued on as if nothing important happened. Bucky kept side-eying him, even as he finished up his cup of coffee, and finally Steve ground out, “I just don’t like his attitude, okay?”

Bucky snorted in disbelief, even as Emma came over to take their cups up. Hearing Steve’s words, her brow furrowed, just a bit, and she carefully picked up Steve’s empty cup without looking at him directly. “Well, that’s Stark for you. It’s not that he’s deliberately trying to be rude – he just doesn’t see it when he says it. It needs to be pointed out to him.”

Furious didn’t begin to cover Steve’s mood, but Bucky was smiling. “Thanks, Emma,” he said quietly. “You wanna get some air, Steve? Before my shift starts?”

The excuse was all Steve needed, and immediately he stood up and made his way to the doors. “Thank you, Emma. I’m sorry – I guess I’m not good company right now.”

Her brows lifted and her eyes grew speculative, and Steve had to stifle his groan at the thought that he’d only added new fuel to the gossips who eagerly awaited any news about the ‘chat-relationship’ he and Tony – he and _Stark_ – had with one another. But Steve wasn’t an idiot, and he wasn’t going to try and explain himself and add more fuel to the blaze. Instead he turned on his heel and stalked out, walking a good distance down the street before stopping and taking in a deep breath.

Behind him, Bucky stopped and put a hand on his shoulder, just touching, and Steve felt more tension leave his body. “You alright?” Bucky asked quietly.

“It’s just – I didn’t realize it could be this way. With all this – this massive pressure by scragging _everyone_ to be the person they think you should be. I just – I feel like I’m being corralled into it. Like I don’t have a choice.”

“Of course you have a fucking choice, Steve,” Bucky grunted, voice rough. “The pressure, I’m sure, is more accidental than purposeful, but even if it’s purposeful – where’s the little guy who didn’t bow to pressure in the least? Where’s the little guy who beat out all other candidates and signed up with the Army? Huh?”

That made a reluctant smile quirk at the corners of Steve’s mouth, and he turned to face Bucky.

“You don’t have to. You never have to, if you don’t want to. No – hear me out, Steve. The reason everyone wants you two together? Or, at least, the reason I was all for it, before you said you didn’t want it? Is because it looked like it made you happy. It doesn’t make you happy, I don’t want it for you. As simple as that.”

Steve nodded jerkily, and Bucky tugged him close for a one-armed hug. “C’mon, let’s go waste some time in the tainment-plex before I have to go on shift,” Bucky offered.

Inside the tainment-plex, one of the few tall buildings within the city, with multi-levels of games, simulators, a floor for mixers, a gym, and a delicious restaurant, Bucky wandered over to the gym and selected one of the hoop-balls. “You want to just sweat some of it out?”

“You’re going to work soon,” Steve pointed out.

“Eh. I get sweaty when I’m at work. It doesn’t much matter if I get sweaty before I go in,” Bucky responded easily. “You want? We could go catch a simulator if you’d rather.”

Something physical seemed perfect, and so Steve shook his head. “No, I’m good with hoops. Reserve a court for us?”

Bucky ambled off to the desk even as Steve took off the sweatshirt and folded it neatly before stuffing it in one of the available lockers. The problem with what Bucky had said was that – it did make him happy. Talking with Tony had made him very happy, and he could easily see himself living with a faceless guy, discussing the ins and outs of the politics of keeping up the Army, the constant uneasy tensions between the Sultanate and the Empire, the differences between genres of books, of acting styles, the discussions over whether the outside world would ever become habitable again. He _liked_ all those conversations.

“Heads up, Steve!”

Jerking around, Steve reflexively caught the ball tossed at his chest and grinned. “We got a court?”

“Yeah, number C5.3, down a ways. I told the attendant to go ahead and leave the court open? So others can come and join in if they want.”

Steve almost told him to change it – though that was the standard way they always played, and had once even (memorably) played hoops with Coulson, today he really didn’t want to be around others. But Bucky liked a large group, and there wasn’t a lot of gossiping in the middle of the game, so instead Steve hitched a shoulder. “Okay, then. Lead on.”

The game couldn’t be too long, if only because Bucky’s shift would start in about two hours, but it was fun to forget everything else and just focus on the curving of the ball, the hoops that dropped from the ceilings lighting up each time they managed to get the ball through one of the hoops. A few people dropped in and joined them – Remy and Kitty, and even Betsy wandered in at one point – but at the end of the hour, it was just the two of them, panting from the exertion of running across the room, sweating and doubled over to get their breath back.

“Do you think he could make it better?”

The quiet question had Steve looking up, and Bucky was staring wistfully at the mechanical limb that still jerked and lagged even now, months into wearing it.

Steve bit down on his instinctive reaction. From the media, he found Stark too flashy, too loud, too overly bright and uncaring about those he hurt in his movements and speech. From meeting him, he found Stark devious, casually arrogant and carelessly roughshod. But Bucky deserved an honest answer. “His company’s the leading one in tech and tech advancements at the moment, and you know it,” he said quietly. “He might. But there’s no guarantee, Bucky. No promises. It might be a convenient project and he’ll lose interest in it the minute that something else catches his eye. Plus, all he did was say a few words in a café. No written agreements, nothing binding. And we don’t know how much it will cost. But can he? I think he can.”

With a wry, resigned smile, Bucky nodded. “Yeah, his first impression leaves much to be desired.”

“I’ll say,” Steve grumbled.

It was that that prompted a laugh out of Bucky, and he was markedly more lighthearted when he teased, “Well, perhaps it’s his second impression that’s best.”

Steve made a face at Bucky and waved at the door. “Shouldn’t you be heading for the showers and then the garage? I’ll probably head home and work on some curriculum changes.”

“If you’re sure. You should stick around, hang out. I met the most interesting people here at twenty-one hundred, you know.” Bucky stood up, clapping a hand on the top of Steve’s head, and made his way out of the room.

Steve stood there a bit longer, letting his breathing get back to normal. Come to think of it, he’d been incredibly fit while in the Army, until the disaster with Peggy. He’d left after that, buying his contract up (with the help of Bucky and Nat, which he still hadn’t repaid them for). It was part of the reason why it had been so difficult to pay off Bucky’s medical bills, even with the amount of money Bucky got from his discharge being medically related. He ought to come here more often. He often showed up in the early mornings to work on the machines, but this – this easy game, companionship with someone else, it was infinitely more satisfactory than a solitary workout.

He’d have to do more of it, then.

Exiting the room, he walked down the hallway and then froze in shock when he recognized the familiar scruffy hair, even if the man’s back was turned to him.

 _Stark_.

But Stark wasn’t looking at him, and in fact he was focused on the free weights he was working with. Beside him was Rhodes, again, and Steve wondered absently who he was even as he watched Stane… lecture Stark? It certainly looked like a lecture. Wild gestures, narrowed eyes, pointed glares—

Steve shook his head and kept walking. He really didn’t need to think about Stark right now. He was just going to go home, forget about yesterday and this morning and just work on curriculum building.

 

 

* * *

 

 

At the library the next day, when Sharon came on shift, he turned his best ‘betrayed’ look on her.

“Oooh dear, Has anyone told you just how devastating your puppy-dog eyes are?” she asked, frowning back at him. “No, I don’t need to know the answer to that question. What’s got you upset, Steve?”

“Everyone and their space-taken sister apparently wanted to set me up with Aro Stark. And I have to wonder, just why in the name of the Emperor did they think that was a good idea? Why did Parker and Pepper push this so scragging _hard_?”

Sharon eyed him a long moment and then sighed. “It probably wasn’t fair of any of us not to at least give you the head’s up, yeah. You can’t blame Parker, though – he’s been looking for a family ever since his parents died, and then his uncle. He’s only got his aunt left, and Stark is good for him, but Parker worries about him, even though kids really shouldn’t worry about adults like that. We’ve all grown really closemouthed about Stark’s real status, especially since he’s deliberately trying to hide from the government’s notice here, and we all saw you and he were a good thing. Pepper… I guess Pepper’s pushing comes from the fact that she’s really worried about Stark. Since his kidnapping, he’s not taken any kind of interest in anyone. He’s been really secluded. He’s more careless with his money, more prone to throwing it away and acting like it’s no big deal. He refuses to take an active role in his company – though, to be fair, he never did that before, either – and instead leaves it up to that snake, Stane. So Pepper sees you, and sees that you’re lonely – yes, it’s obvious, Steve, you pine horribly, you look so sad and worn out – and she thinks, well, here’s a guy who lights up when Stark messages him. And she knows Stark really well – she helped Stark settle in the house here, got it fixed up and put together according to his specifications, all very discreetly – and she knows how Stark reacts to you. He had a long-term partner once, long ago, and it didn’t end very well. So he’s had a lot of different casual and short-term lovers, and that’s it.”

Rubbing her forehead, she groaned and hitched one shoulder. “While I probably shouldn’t say this, since you’re so mad… I have to say I can see what everyone else sees, too. The only one who captures his attention this long is Pepper, and it’s because she wasn’t awed by him the way most of his others are awed of him. But she left him for his guard and while I’m pretty sure Stark isn’t jealous, it still galls him a bit.”

“Maybe I’m not ready to get into a relationship,” Steve grumbled, turning to the desk as a student came up and he began the process to check out the data chips.

Sharon propped her chin up on her hand, elbow on the desk, and she lifted one eyebrow tellingly. “Really? I would have sworn that yesterday you were considering moving past coy flirting and into an actual relationship with him. What changed?”

She did have a point. This time yesterday – or thereabouts – Steve had been thinking about moving into the dating scene, considering seriously dating this person. That had been before he’d known it was Stark, though. Stark couldn’t avoid the newspapers forever, after all. Aristos never delved into the lower classes unless it was for slumming. There were no possible futures together.

And Steve couldn’t get out of his mind Stark’s father, and the project they had tried, one which Steve had volunteered for. He couldn’t forget Peggy’s death, and his fault in that, and while that had happened two years ago, her picture still graced every three or four pages in his sketchbooks, and her hologram was programmed into his personalized holographic system.

“Seeing him… he’s way above my station, and that’s changed,” he said slowly. “I mean – I thought I was ready. I was going to give it a chance. But… he’s aristo, and I’m markedly not. I don’t – I don’t fit into his world, and trying is only going to hurt us both in the long run.”

Sharon studied him closely before sighing. “Well, I guess you have the right to make that decision. I will warn you, though, Tony will try to get you to change that decision.”

“No means no, or does it mean something different for aristos?” Steve said, voice bitter.

Surprise flashed over her face. “No, spaceflak, it means the same thing! Where did you ever get that idea – no, if you tell Stark to back off, he will. You might have to put up with him pining from afar – because he did that with Pepper, and she decided to give him a try because of his faithfulness – but he won’t do anything you don’t want to do, ever. Okay? Don’t even think you have to worry about that!”

Steve kept his tongue between his teeth. He knew, from experience in the city, that aristos were rarely held to the law. They got away with practically anything and they certainly didn’t think anything of the word ‘no.’

He’d just have to be on his guard and keep away from Stark as much as possible. Certainly Stark would forget about him and fixate on something else. He was an aristocrat, after all, and known to be eccentric. Steve was boring and quiet; there was nothing about him to keep Stark’s attention on him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 “He’s a persistent spaceflak, isn’t he?”

Steve groaned, face down on the couch.

Bucky came over and sympathetically rubbed Steve’s back. “At least we’re heading into the city this evening, yeah? One full day without seeing him anywhere.”

Right now that sounded like best Steve can hope for. If he’d known that Stark would somehow mentally read Steve’s certainty that Stark would lose interest, and take it as a challenge, he would have never though such a thing.

It seemed, now, like everywhere Steve _turned_ , Stark was there. Stark showed up at the library at least once a day, suddenly became a startlingly regular patron of the tainment-plex’s gym, even showed up at the grocery store (looking utterly out of his depth).

And every day, there was a gift waiting for Steve on his doorstep. The apartment manager, an elderly man, thought the courting was adorable.

Steve had tried to stop it. He really, really had. He’d taken the first gift (a small vase with some startlingly bright flowers that were absolutely beautiful, and Steve had itched to capture them on his sketchpad) and walked all the way to Stark’s home. The automated door – or, what he had _thought_ had been an automated door, and later found out was an actual _fully-functioning AI_ – had let him in without challenging him, and he’d been directed by the AI to those stairs he’d seen Stark come up that one time.

Going down those stairs had led him to an underground workshop, full of mechanical pieces and multiple pieces of delicate machinery and holographic screens. It had made Steve overly nervous that he’d hit into something and break it.

He’d also been worried that the automated voice ( _the AI_ ) had led him to the wrong place before he noticed that there was a body slumped over one workbench, a tool still in one hand. He had felt – bad, to wake Stark when he looked like he really needed the sleep, but Steve had wanted to make it very clear that he wasn’t looking for a relationship right now.

Stark had jerked awake, surprised, and Steve could still remember Stark’s exact words.

 

_“What? Steve? What – why are you here?”_

_Steve had held out the vase. “They’re very lovely, Stark, but – I’m not ready to be in a relationship. I don’t want one. I don’t want this.”_

_Stark had swallowed hard, looking at the vase, and then his eyes had slid to the side. “It’s – you can keep it even if you don’t want to be in a relationship. It doesn’t harm you.”_

_“But it’d be leading you on,” Steve had corrected Stark, feeling like the lowest piece of space-scragg for this but not wanting to give Stark an opening._

_“Can I just – can I just ask, if I had been someone, anyone else, would you have considered it? Were you considering it, before?”_

_Steve had hesitated._

_And Stark, that little scum-sucking scragg, had jumped on the hesitation. “Is it my family name, or me?”_

_“Look,” Steve had said, voice soft and strained, “you’re an aristo. You were the Emperor’s right-hand man. I’m just – a commoner, a failed experiment. This would never work, and you know it.”_

_“If that’s the only reason,” Stark had said, eyes suddenly alight, “then we can work around that.”_

_Steve had shaken his head, hard. “No – Stark – I mean, Aro Stark—”_

_“Nope, not changing my mind. I’m going to show you that it doesn’t matter to me, and then we can try, a real try. You can’t see the future, right?”_

_Licking his lips, Steve had tried again. “No, but, Aro Stark, this isn’t—”_

_“Keep the flowers. And I’ll court you properly, I’ll do everything right, just you see, it won’t be bad, you know? You’d be – it’d be good. Really… good.”_

_For the longest time, Steve had just stood there, staring, impressed in spite of himself because of Stark’s persistence. Then Stark had stood up, and Steve had been – surprised, to see that Stark had been a few inches shorter than him._

_“We could – we could really try, Steve. I liked – I liked talking to you. I think you liked talking to me too. If it’s just my social status, that doesn’t matter, Steve, it really doesn’t matter as much as the aristo class would want you to believe. If it’s my family name, I promise you I am vastly different from my father. If it’s something else, let me know, and I’ll try to fix it, okay? We’ll – we can work with it. But I really want to try for this.”_

Suffice to say, Steve thought gloomily, face buried in the synth-cushion, Stark had really done his damnedest to try.

In Pepper’s defense, she had tried to talk Stark out of it. At least she had tried. Coulson and Fury had also tried to rein in Stark, with minimal success for a day or two. Everyone else in the town found it adorable.

 _Adorable_.

Peter had demanded to be walked home every time Steve had the opening or morning shift. Some stubborn piece of Steve’s pride had been pricked when Peter claimed that Steve was scared Stark would convince Steve to accept the courtship, because he caved more often than he liked to admit.

And sometimes – sometimes he stayed, because Stark would be talking with Aro Obadiah Stane, and that man set off a lot of alarms in Steve. He couldn’t explain why he didn’t like the CEO of Stark’s company, couldn’t explain why, if Stark was in the middle of a conference call or working on machinery and it was just Stane and Peter in the house, Steve stayed because he didn’t like the idea of Stane being around Peter. He felt obligated, in a way, which in turn made him resentful, and the worst of it was that he knew his obligation was all in his head.

After all, Bucky, Clint, and Nat had all pointed out that he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to. Clint, at least, was firmly on Steve’s side in regards to Steve’s dislike of Stark and the situation as a whole, though that was in part because Clint worked for Aro Osborn and hated all aristos on principle. Bucky wasn’t as firmly on Steve’s side, and Nat thought Steve was being obtuse.

Steve would like to pretend that part of Bucky’s siding with Stark and the rest of the townspeople on this issue was because Stark _had_ come through with the arm. Bucky’d been – ecstatic. The new arm obeyed him with no lag at all, it moved smoothly, it was waterproof and adjustable, and it had sensors that recalibrated the amount of pressure in its grip – no more would Bucky pat Steve on the shoulder and leave bruises, or pick up a plate and snap it in half with his metal limb. No, it responded beautifully, and it had converted Bucky to Stark’s camp.

Well, that was unfair to say. Really, the reason Bucky wasn’t as supportive of Steve’s refusal to give Stark a chance was because of Steve himself.

_“You forget the walls of your bedroom aren’t that thick. I know who you’re jerking off to. And I know that you’re running scared, not smart. If you come up with a smart reason, no matter how shallow, I’ll stick by you, but right now you’re choosing to hate the man for something in the past,” Bucky had said pointedly one night, when Steve had come home in a foul mood because Stark had been conveniently ‘waiting’ outside the library with his sleek racer-craft, offering a ride to Steve, and Steve had been embarrassed because everyone had been staring as Steve had turned Stark down. Steve had tried to gain sympathy from Bucky and been pissed at the fact that Bucky had only laughed and remarked he’d have liked to see that for himself._

“C’mon, Steve, you’re not going to suffocate yourself like that. We’re taking you out dancing, remember? Mixers and fun. Clint’s rounded up the gang, and we’ll all have a night with no responsibilities, no attachments. Let’s just get your mind off things, yeah?”

With a huff, Steve pushed himself up off the couch and glowered at the material. “I just – I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he repeated stubbornly.

“No, you just don’t want to admit that it’s okay to date again after Peggy, even though you keep telling us that you’ve moved on,” Bucky grunted, hefting his pack onto his back. “Got your daily text from Stark?”

Steve’s cheeks flushed with a mix of embarrassment and shame. “Yes,” he grumbled, snagging his bag and shuffling past Bucky to the tube.

“Did you tell him where we’re going?” Bucky asked, keying the lock on the apartment and joining Steve in the tube.

With a flat stare, Steve drawled, “Yes, because of course I want him to follow me to NYC. No, Bucky, I did not, and I don’t intend to.”

“Alright, alright, just wondering,” Bucky said, smirking at Steve. “It’s not like you to let him go wandering around looking for you, though. And you know he’ll be doing that tomorrow.”

Steve folded his arms. “I’m ignoring you,” he informed Bucky loftily.

Bucky snickered and stepped out of the tube as it opened to the ground floor.

Pushing Bucky’s words out of his mind was a lot harder than Steve wanted to admit, though. Sadly enough, he realized Bucky was one hundred percent right – when he intended to stay home so that he didn’t run into Stark, he always sent a curt < _You won’t find me today, Stark, go home and do something useful with your time, >_ and it poked at the back of his mind until with a frustrated growl, he dug his reader out of his pocket.

Bucky cackled as he took Steve’s bag and his own and stowed them in the carriage of the craft. “Get in, you emotionally-twisted-up idiot,” he laughed, and if it wasn’t for the fond note in his voice, Steve would have punched him in the mouth. As it was, he slugged Bucky in the arm – the flesh one – and hunched his shoulders. “You don’t have to say anything, just that you’re visiting friends. Then again, this is Stark, who hacked your personal reader within an evening and used to get up to all kind of trouble electronically in his youth. He’ll probably know exactly where all your friends live.”

Steve manfully ignored Bucky to type out, far rougher and harsher than he needed to on the inanimate object, _< Going out of Catskill for a day. Pay attention to Peter or Pepper for once.>_

Almost immediately, the reader buzzed, but as it was there were over two hundred messages from Stark, and it was just as easy to ignore this message as it was all other messages. Stowing the reader in the compartment in the arm of his chair, Steve crossed his arms and glowered at Bucky. “Can we go _now_?” he asked pointedly, and a little snidely. “Or is there something else you want me to do?”

“We can go,” Bucky replied easily, getting into the craft. Most heavy-craft were two-seaters, foam bucket chairs with storage compartments in the arms, a flight harness hanging loose on either side of the chair. Heavy-crafts were designed to carry a lot in the carriage, so they hung a little low to the ground even when the carriage was mostly empty, and Bucky’s – being an old model – hung lower than most. The craft itself barely cleared two hundred feet off the ground. Then again, the rental-craft Steve had used to get to Catskill had barely made it a hundred feet off the ground, so at least the craft wouldn’t have to follow the old road system to get to NYC – it was just a straight-shot down, if there weren’t too large trees or growths in the way. Bucky had requested the flight plan before now and had gotten it approved – he knew the direct way. Steve was just along for the ride.

The interior of heavy-crafts always felt more cramped than everyday crafts. To balance out the carriage, which usually held a lot of stuff since heavy-crafts were intended for movers or deliveries, most of the weight of the engines and hover technology was in the nose of the craft, and the side windows were less rounded than most crafts, flattened to try and create a kind of rounded triangle to help the heavy-craft cut through the air. The cockpit was in the body as close to the pointed nose as possible, on top of the carriage, the driver’s console curving around the driver’s chair while the passenger lucked out with more room to stretch out, even if there was a back-up console in front of them in case there was a system failure on the driver’s end, or if the passenger and driver wanted to switch off-and-on driving. Steve settled in, kicking his legs out before him, as Bucky flipped the ignition line open and twisted a few dials to get the engine humming.

“You can drop off, you know,” Bucky offered as they rose into the air, and he began to meander towards the Gate. “It won’t take us much more than an hour to get there but I know you had the evening shift today, and switched with Sharon so that we could head out early, and that you had the closing shift last night. You could use the rest.”

Steve bit at his lip – ignoring the soft buzzing coming from his reader – and watched as their altitude hit fifty feet. They were as high or higher than most buildings (which was still slightly jarring to Steve, who still couldn’t grasp the fact that the shortest building here was one story while in NYC the shortest building was one hundred and five stories) and exactly the height needed for the Gate.

Gates were the only openings that allowed people in and out of the cities, set up off the ground so that people could not just walk through them. Since all cities were covered by a radiation shield, to enter a city the craft needed to pass through a decontamination chamber and pass inspection. That was more important in the wilder parts of the country, especially since there were still random militias that fought against Imperial rule, but this close to major hubs the inspection was formality. Now, had their flight plan not been approved by both their city of exit and their city of entrance, their craft risked being shot down by the police that guarded the Walls of the cities – but Bucky had already submitted their flight plan and gotten approval for their two-night, one-day visit to NYC. Moving through the Gate in this small city was a matter of minutes; in the bustling city of NYC, it’d probably be around an hour’s worth of wasted time while harassed Gate-keepers and trigger-happy police dealt with the huge amount of people who visited NYC daily.

Here, though, Bucky pulled into the first port and slid down the window to hand over the requisite papers before the guard waved them through to the next point in the journey. With a nod of thanks, Bucky took back the papers and slid the window back up, engaged the radiation shielding, and then moved the craft past two heavy doors before coming to a halt, hovering in the middle of the chamber.

Behind them, the doors clanged shut, and then secondary doors slid closed on top of them.

Before them, two lead-lined doors clanked open, protesting every step of the way. When the doors were open wide enough, Bucky reengaged the forward drive and maneuvered the craft out of the chamber and into the world outside of the city.

Here, the fallout from the last nuclear war was clear. There were strange growths and twisted shapes, even a hint of white that indicated a bleached bone. There were swaths of land completely barren, and then patches where dead trees framed the orange-tinted sky. This close to the city, there were a few structures, signs, and other indicators of human life now worn away to rubble and ruin.

It was a sobering and terrifying reminder of what the world had come to those many years ago.

To be quite honest, Steve knew that the threat of radiation contamination and sickness were very, very low now. The fallout was over and done with, the lingering contamination low enough not to warrant the strict shields and regulations that ruled the civilized parts of the world. After all, there were still uncivilized parts of the world – warring militias within pockets of both the Empire and the Sultanate, as well as fighting done on the ground in the demarcation zones. That fighting and those militias did not have the safety of cities, of Walls that blocked out the radiation, and the worst that happened was sterility and sometimes, not all the time, a sickness termed APOCH, incurable still even with all their medical advances. Other than that, life was returning to the world. Species that had managed to be in the places where nuclear fallout had barely touched were moving into the areas that had been devastated; scientists had already begun cloning extinct species and crafting special zoos for said species to live until a safe place could be found for them in the actual wild.

“Hey.”

Jerked out of his thoughts, Steve turned to look at Bucky. They were now about two hundred feet off the ground or thereabouts, enough to skim over most of the rubble and barren trunks, though not all.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping, yeah? Get some rest, and we’ll be there before you know it.”

Steve sighed, but nodded and leaned back in the chair. It was comfortable enough to cradle his head and back without putting his body in a weird position, and he obligingly fell into a doze, letting his mind wander over the Stark problem without really thinking too hard about it.

The thing was – and he could admit it to himself, without anyone standing over his shoulder or laughing at how twisted up he’d gotten himself – had he met Stark under any other circumstances, he probably would have tried to make a go for it. He hated the class system, the way that Bucky and other Black Widows, like Betsy and Natasha, were set outside the hierarchy, feared and reviled because of it. He hated it when aristo kids had flaunted it that their parents had their own peace-keeping men, and the local government wouldn’t dare touch them. If Stark had been anyone else…

But Stark was Howard Stark’s son, Howard Stark who had been the manipulator of Steve’s genes. Steve had signed up for the Army even though he was physically unable to pass the tests – he hadn’t wanted to let Bucky go it alone – but his blood type and list of physical defects had flagged the attention of the R&D department, and they’d called him in. Because he had been an experiment, he’d been given more flexibility: he’d not needed to be discharged to leave the Army, the way Bucky had, but only needed to come up with the money to buy his contract. Beyond that, he had gotten slightly better pay, better benefits, and definitely more individual attention.

Howard Stark had been an organic engineer, working with biometrical machinery and bionics and bio-interfaces to maximize the potential locked within the DNA code. While splicing code together and building a breed of soldiers like the Black Widows was achievable, and fixing cancerous and other diseases of the genes and blood were a thing of the past, there was still a need for entirely human soldiers able to take orders and follow them through immediately with no lag, divorced from sympathy or empathy or anything else that would get in the way of the mission objective and completion. Steve had been one of seven test subjects for Howard Stark’s serum, and it certainly had maximized his genes to cure him of all his other ailments. It had allowed him to put on muscle ridiculously fast. It had also allowed him to enter a trance-like state, when he called it up, that would prevent him from feeling anything at all beyond an urge to complete mission parameters.

His handler had been Peggy Carter, and on his first mission, he’d gotten her killed.

Steve shifted restlessly in his seat, brow furrowing, and only dimly registered that Bucky’s fingers – the warmth of flesh, not the cool metal of Bucky’s metal arm – were brushing across his forehead, soothing Steve’s thoughts as best he could. Not that Bucky could do much; these demons lived within Steve’s mind.

To be absolutely, strictly fair, the serum worked in the way that it had been predicted. Steve, along with his handler, had been with the other test subjects, moving through a suspected ‘hot zone’ of militia activity, when they’d been ambushed. Steve had managed to sink into the trance-state and defend himself, but he’d been unable to stop. In that trance-state, he – and the other test subjects – had killed everyone around them. _Everyone_. Too far away for the remotely watching scientists to do anything, without a target and without a handler to knock them out of that trance-state, they had set upon one another.

Of the fourteen that went out, and the suspected thirty-seven members of the militia group that had ambushed them, only Steve had come back alive.

He had scrabbled for money immediately and bought out his contract, and every day he kept close eye on his emotional state, made certain he never slipped into that trance-state again.

And, again being fair, while it had not been Howard Stark who had killed Steve’s love Peggy, and had not forced Steve to kill everyone else, it had been Howard Stark who had wanted to clone Steve and continue again. It had been Howard Stark who wanted to subject Steve to another round of testing to refine the genome. It had been Howard Stark who’d said, so casually, that Steve had been nothing before the serum and if he threw this chance away, he’d become nothing once again. That Steve’s only wroth lay in what had been pumped into his veins and bonded to his DNA.

While Stark might not be Howard, he certainly reminded Steve of the older man. Just – the way he held himself. Mannerisms. Blatant disregard for personal property and privacy. Expectations of everyone around him to fall in line. Just – everything. And Steve worried. He’d argued Clint down from moving out to Catskill with him and sharing an apartment mostly because he couldn’t fully trust himself not to fall into that trance-state again. He couldn’t count on his control lasting forever. Bucky had been marginally easier to accept, if only because Bucky, as a Black Widow, was the ultimate defensive fighter and Steve didn’t worry at all that he could hope to put Bucky in the dirt, even with the enhancements the serum had given him. It didn’t change the fact, though, that Steve worried one day he’d lose it, and no one would be around to help him.

“Shh, Steve. It’s alright.”

The words sounded far away, gentle and kind, and Steve let himself be coaxed out of his dark thoughts in favor of lighter times, times of laughter and love.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into going to a nude-level mixer,” Steve groaned. “I can’t believe you brought _Natasha_ to a nude-level mixer.”

“Why not? I certainly enjoy the view,” Nat murmured, sipping casually at her drink and watching the gyrating naked flesh around them with an appreciative eye.

Once they had arrived, Steve and Bucky had parked the heavy-craft in a garage slot and took a ferry-craft over to Clint’s apartment, their stuff tucked tight to their sides to prevent the street grifters from nabbing their stuff. Clint had been waiting for them, and welcomed them in, shoving Bucky onto the couch and dumping Steve’s stuff in front of the heater. They’d had time to unwind for a bit before Nat, Piotr, Wanda, Joseph, Jonothan, and Rick had come over. Clint’s tiny apartment had rapidly filled up, everyone bringing along something to eat, and they’d had a mish-mash potluck dinner before agreeing to go out to a mixer. It wasn’t until the ferry-craft dropped them on the corner of the street that Steve realized Clint must have decided that Steve needed a break from thinking about Stark.

Otherwise, why else take him to a nude-level mixer?

The mixer took up six stories of a downtown multi-level shopping center, stating at floor 187; the bottom two were for casual dates and meet-ups, a quick bite to eat, or a short moment to catch up, with formal dancing and, really, nothing that you wouldn’t see in a restaurant. The next four were the actual dancing and mingling; the higher up you went, the less clothes people wore. The highest level, everyone was nude, and boasted a dance floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by synth-couches for sex, as well as a bunch of supplies for said sex at the bar. The next lowest level was without the couches but had a few bench seats set on the edges, and a few tables in front of the bar, and mostly everyone was nude or on their way there, the beat thumping through the writhing crowd. Next level down was generally just topless dancers, with a bar and some light snacks available, flashing lights and the beat vibrating up through the floor, booths scattered around the outside of the dance floor where mostly-clothed people sat and rested. The lowest level was the fully-clothed level – which was where their group had started off, until they had migrated up a floor, taking up one of those booths and engaging the muffling screen, and Steve was valiantly trying not to stare while losing his battle with his blush.

“Hmm. I think I’m going to dance. Coming, Bucky?” Natasha asked, standing up and sliding her blouse off, folding it neatly and handing it to Wanda. Obligingly, Wanda took the article of clothing, even as Bucky handed off his shirt to Steve and took Natasha’s hand, entering the mass of people.

“This is supposed to be a night out for _you_ , Steve,” Clint said pointedly when Joseph and Rick had stripped and wandered off, and Piotr had joined up with his girlfriend, Kitty, leaving just Wanda and Jonothan and Clint at the table with Steve.

Steve swallowed hard. “I – I know, Clint, but really this was never – never what I liked doing anyway.”

“Then we need to get you drunk, or as drunk as possible,” Clint decided. “C’mon, Steve. Loosen up. Have some fun. You’re barely twenty-five years old and you act like our father.” Before Steve could protest, Clint was calling up the ordering console and keying in a request for drinks. “You don’t have to wake up early tomorrow anyway; you can get drunk tonight. Be an irresponsible kid for once.”

At that, Steve let out a soft sigh, still frustrated but mildly accepting. “Fine, Clint,” he groaned. “Just remember that we have to be aware enough to find the correct ferry and the correct apartment, with the coordination required to open the lock.”

That was probably the last coherent, rational statement Steve said that evening, mostly because whatever Clint had brought to the table – and Steve noticed his drink was vastly different from Clint’s, and Wanda’s and Jonothan’s, since his was much darker and smoking in a vaguely threatening way – was obviously designed to make someone completely wasted in the shortest amount of time possible. Because of the experiment, it was ridiculously hard for Steve to feel anything beyond mild intoxication most of the time, but apparently the secret to it, as he found out that night, was to overload himself with alcohol all at once.

At one point, Wanda’s boyfriend showed up and took her onto the dance floor, and two of Jonothan’s friends came over and talked him into dancing. When it was just him and Clint, and Clint had topped him up for the third time and everything was suitably floating and distant, Clint tugged off Steve’s shirt and shoved him out of the booth. “Go have some fun. Find someone else!” he called, voice lost in the thunder of the crowd as Steve was instantly snagged by a random woman and tugged into the writhing mess of the dance floor.

He danced with her a short time, able to ignore the fact that he really didn’t dance all that well simply by letting the crush of bodies dictate his movements, and then a hand curled invitingly over his shoulder and tugged him back against a hard male chest. He moved from partner to partner – at one point, he thought he was dancing with Nat, her eyes dark and smoldering as she put him at east, but maybe it was just another slim, short, pixie-haired brunette – unsure of what he was looking for in a partner, until he realized that he’d been with one person for the last couple of minutes.

The person – man, Steve believed, head fuzzy, though a bit clearer than it had been when he’d first started out on the dance floor – was shorter than Steve, black hair short and spiked, the tips barely making it past Steve’s nose and frosted with gold, exotic coloring partly a result of heritage and partly a result of cosmetic manipulation, green eyes inviting, hooked his fingers into Steve’s waistband and pressed his mouth against Steve’s collarbone, biting down. “We can move this a floor up?” he offered, invitation clear.

In the dimness and flashing lights, he could pretend that skin was paler, that this man was a bit taller, that the hair was messy because of working with machine parts instead of because of an artful design. Steve didn’t mind pretending right now.

And that didn’t sound like a bad idea at all, even if it would have earlier in the evening. Clint had been right – Steve was supposed to loosen up, and one floor up only required the removal of pants. While Steve didn’t have ‘sexy undercloths’ the way most did who moved up there, he could still get behind the idea of having this young man pressed against him.

When the guy saw that Steve was accepting of the idea, he began to draw Steve to the circular stairway that spiraled through the entirety of the mixer’s six floors. Steve paused, made a wait motion, and ducked over to the booth.

Clint was there, and so were Bucky and Natasha, the latter two all over each other. Sheepishly, Steve removed his pants and handed them to Clint.

“Good going, Steve!” Clint hooted, and Steve cursed him genially before making his way back to the man.

“I wanted to take those off,” the guy pouted, and before Steve could think about it, he was leaning down to press a kiss against the pout, nipping on plump lips and curling his hands around the slim waist of the young man before him. When he pulled back, those green eyes were darkly satisfied and promised more pleasure, even as he hummed deep in his throat and purred, “I guess you’ll just have to peel _my_ pants off, then.”

“I’m absolutely fine with that,” Steve replied, fingers curling under the edge of the sinfully tight synth-leather and finding the cleft of the man’s ass.

With excitement coursing through their veins, they made their way up the stairs, stopping at the bar (because once patrons moved up to the third level and clothes started coming off, the bars held lockers behind them for the discarded clothing) while Steve slid down the guy’s body, dragging the material down slim legs and revealing a tight thong already distended from the guy’s erection.

“Shekt,” the young man swore, eyes going heavy-lidded. “What did you say your name was?”

Feeling bold, Steve licked against the man’s inner thigh before standing up. “Steve,” he breathed into the shorter male’s ear.

When the man shuddered against Steve’s mostly naked body – “Ray,” the man offered – Steve noticed in an abstract way that it wasn’t that Stark had changed his sexual preference, but perhaps Peggy had narrowed it, because that shudder was delightful and Steve wasn’t even thinking about Stark.

Well. Mostly not thinking about Stark.

The beat up here was more fast-paced, stronger, making Steve’s entire body throb and pound with a deeper need than he ever felt before. He lost himself in that sea of flesh, in bodies pressed against his and those enchanting eyes watching him.

He found himself vaguely wishing those eyes were brown.

Shaking his head to dislodge Stark from his thoughts, he gasped when the man – Ray – reached forward and cupped him through his boxers.

“Move this to a bench?” Ray half-shouted at Steve, trying to be heard over the music.

That was how Steve found himself stumbling over to one of the benches set against the wall, Ray falling on top of him and into the cradle of his hips, mouths sliding together.

It was – ridiculously intense. Steve wasn’t a virgin, but he certainly wasn’t experienced; he’d had two short relationships before meeting Peggy, and then Peggy’s death and his loss of control had him placing a wall between himself and all other potential partners. He’d only begun to wonder what it was like with other people. And he had to say, he was greatly enjoying himself.

But he would rather an emotional connection before anything more happened.

Not that anything more was going to happen – he and Ray were spending an inordinate amount of time petting and kissing, running hands and tongue and teeth over every inch of exposed skin (with fingers sliding along the edges of the _un_ exposed skin). This was – amazing, and amazing was too inadequate a word for it. Steve broke apart, panting, head thrown back as Ray straddled his thigh and rocked experimentally.

Gingerly, and with a tinge of regret, Steve put a hand on Ray’s waist and stilled his motions.

Ray paused, eyes blown, lips and cheeks flushed from their petting, and winced good-naturedly. “Ah. Not – all the way then?”

Steve shook his head. “No,” he said, and let Ray here the traces of regret there. “You’re – amazing, but I…”

“You’re thinking about someone else,” Ray finished for him, and gave a crooked grin. “Whoever it is, they’re lucky for you. Should I – escort you downstairs?”

“No—” Steve sat up, adrenaline and endorphins still throwing his body’s hormones out of whack, and he took a deep breath to try and regain control. Losing control would be very, very bad. “No. I’m – I’m good. Thank you, Ray.”

“Oh, thank _you_ , Steve,” Ray murmured, leaning forward to nip at the underside of his jaw again. “The pleasure was mine.”

When Steve made his way back downstairs – a lot more sober, now that his metabolism had burned through the alcohol, but also a lot more nauseous since he’d had nothing solid to eat – Clint was tipsy but not drunk, sitting with one of his many exes (Bobbi? Yeah, Bobbi) and three other strangers.

“Hey, Steve!” Clint called out, a bit too loudly, and Steve winced as a headache made itself known. “Hey, hey, d’ya get lucky, man?”

The girl closest to Clint punched him in the arm and he flinched. “You’re a crude man, Barton,” she grumbled.

“Easy, Kate,” Clint whined.

“Hey, Clint, I’m going to head on back to the apartment,” Steve said. “Can I have a temp pass in?”

Muttering under his breath about party scummers, Clint tapped at his comm. unit and after a moment, Steve’s comm. vibrated, indicating he’d received an incoming code from Clint. “Go ahead. This was supposed to be for you, you know!”

Steve smiled at that. “Thanks. It worked.”

That gave Clint pause, though it took him a while to work through it. “You made up your mind?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I have.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Steve made his way down the path to Stark’s home, trying to convince himself it wasn’t insane to be doing this. After all, Stark had said his home was open to Steve. Stark had invited Steve over multiple times in many different messages on his reader and even sent Steve the code to access the front door via comm. unit. And Steve had made up his mind, was going to lay everything out on the table for Stark, and see what happened from there. Stark would want to know what Steve decided, especially with his continued courtship (because when they’d come back last night, Steve driving, and stumbled up to Steve’s apartment, there had been a box of real chocolate waiting on the doorstep in a stasis container so it didn’t spoil or melt). Steve owed it to Stark and to himself. It was the right thing to do.

But it didn’t change the fact that Steve was sweating nervously. There was no guarantee that this would work out. And if Stark made him dance the edge of control in the same way that led to the trance-state, it could be very dangerous. Steve needed to lay it _all_ out on the table – everything that had happened to him, and everything that might happen, and why this was a bad idea. Stark might change his mind. Steve might _kill_ Stark.

Yet the encounter with Ray had taught him one thing – whether he wanted it or not, he was stuck on Stark. And, as he’d found out, he’d not been even mildly upset about that, beyond his stubborn insistence to not fall in line with what everyone expected.

That was pride, then, holding him back, and not a valid reason. Not when Stark’s messages (he’d read through them all yesterday morning, while Bucky and Clint had groaned their way through their hangovers, every single one of Stark’s two hundred and thirty seven messages) brought him such joy. Not when he failed at covering up the fact that he eavesdropped on any conversation that mentioned Stark, now. Not when he would walk Peter over to Stark’s house, telling himself it was to give the kid protection from bullies, when it really was only because he wanted to see Stark again.

The path turned up into Stark’s drive again, and this time Steve steeled himself and walked confidently up to the door. Now, knowing it was an AI, he cleared his throat and said, “JARVIS, I have a—”

Before he could say anything else, the doors swung open wide, and the interior of the house was dark. Steve frowned, not certain what that meant. JARVIS wasn’t supposed to just open up the doors. Yes, JARVIS had his biometrics scanned into the memory banks, but that still didn’t explain why the inside of the house was dark, especially since the latest message from Stark had been this morning, and consisted of _< plz steve im just wantin to sit 1 date jus 1 nad u don hav 2 do nethng els plz stev>_ which implied that Stark wasn’t off-planet. He knew Stark had a lot of business holdings around the globe and in multiple colonies, but Peter said that Stark always gave a heads up if he was going to be out of the city – and that he didn’t interfere with the business-side of it anymore, anyway, not with Stane handling it.

Floor lights turned on, creating a lit path curving away from the foyer and to the left. Hesitantly, Steve made his way down the path, looking interestedly at a part of the house he’d never seen before. He’d only ever been in the kitchen and the lounge with Peter, and a few times in the workshop (to try and return gifts). This part of the house seemed to hold large pieces of art, and briefly Steve wished they were better illuminated so that he could see them.

When the floor lights ran out, Steve stopped, finding himself in the middle of a hallway, a closed door to his right, an open door to his left, and a room up ahead with dim lighting that could just be a forgotten light, a computer screen, or something else entirely. Also to his left, a little farther down the hall than the door, was a tightly spiraling staircase that curved gracefully upwards.

All the lights went out.

Steve let out a small gasp – and then, faintly, he could hear a noise from above him. It sounded like – Stane?

Now, Steve began to worry. Stane, he knew, was _not_ allowed in the house when Stark wasn’t home. Ready to go up and see if he could shame Stane into leaving (as it wasn’t exactly his house, so he couldn’t directly order Stane to leave, and Stane was an aristo, which meant that even if it _had_ been his house, he’d be hard-pressed to get Stane out anyway), he put a hand on the railing and began to ascend the stairs. They were silent, iron-wrought with flowing patterns, the steps themselves what appeared to be marble. Steve was just thankful they didn’t creak, and as he got higher up, eh began to be able to pick out direct words.

_“—one last gift to give, I guess. Stop squirming, you’re only making yourself die faster.”_

Fear shot through Steve’s heart, and he quickened his pace.

“Pity you couldn’t just hand it over to the company, and had to wave it about in the Emperor’s face. See, that’s the problem, Tones – you don’t think ahead. Your old man did. I may not have liked the bastard, but he at least had a plan. You, you’re a child, erratic and sporadic and utterly useless except for the rare flash of genius.”

Steve came out on a landing, wide open space, filled with soft couches and – was that a pool? – but across the room, there was an open doorway, and a strong light coming from it.

Steve dashed across the room, skidding across the marble, and came to a dead stop inside the doorway.

Obadiah Stane had Stark sprawled out on the bed, Stark’s shirt torn open to reveal a hole in the center of his chest a full fist deep. Stark’s head was turned away from the doorway to show that Stane had peeled out some kind of implant – there was a bleeding wound behind the curve of Stark’s left ear, and a bloody piece of machinery sat on the bed beside Tony’s head. Stane was sitting on the bed next to Stark, his hand _inside_ Stark’s chest and coming out with a circular piece of electronics that hummed and pulsed and glowed a light blue.

Next to the bed were two strange men, each holding laser-blades, with stunners strapped to their hips, dressed in security detail. One held the limp form of Peter Parker.

A red haze fell over Steve’s vision.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s okay. Steve, please, please, it’s okay, it’s alright, please, we need to call someone, or you need to let me near. _Please_ , Steve.”

Slowly, Steve came back to himself, throat raw from a rough growl that he became conscious of making. Around him were pieces of bodies, flung here and there. His upper arm and his chest hurt, badly, and he was seeing double. As his rational mind began to regain control, he realized he was hunched over Stark’s body, and Peter was shaking, kneeling on the edge of the bed by the footboard. Stark was whispering something, but it was too soft to hear.

Steve realized his hands were red up to his forearms, the blood drying where it was thinner and still smearing on the sheets where it was thick. Pieces of flesh clung to his hands, and it took him a long moment to battle nausea back far enough to croak, “Peter?”

“Steve, Steve, _Steve_ ,” Peter sobbed, and he was across the bed like a bolt, skinny arms wrapping around Steve’s waist and head tucking into Steve’s bloody chest. The red smearing against Peter’s brown hair made Steve recoil, staggering back and then falling off the bed entirely.

“ _Peter_.”

The word was a whisper, and Stark was staring at the two of them, terror in the back of his eyes even as he repeated, “Peter, _I need your help_.”

Still sobbing, shaking like a leaf, Peter stumbled to Stark’s side, gripping the circular piece of machinery that was discarded on the sheets next to Stark’s body. Steve watched, numb, as Peter seemed to just slot the piece back in, and then take the thin rectangle piece of machinery by Stark’s head and put that into place behind Stark’s ear. He was… very much not with what was happening, or why, when the piece of machinery was placed back into Stark’s head, Stark let out a shuddering breath and sat up. He watched, detached and uncomprehendingly, as Stark pushed himself up into a standing position and swayed a little before surveying the room around him.

“Who knew Dad’s crowning achievement would save his son’s life?” Stark murmured absently, coaxing Peter off the bed and tucking Peter close to his body. Then he turned to Steve.

Steve wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. Condemnation. Hatred. Disgust, certainly, for what he had done, so easily. How he’d not gone after Peter or Stark, either, he had no idea. He stared, eyes wide, as Stark looked him over carefully.

“Let’s head downstairs, Steve,” Stark sighed finally, putting his hand out to Steve and waiting.

After a long moment, Steve put his hand into Stark’s and stood up, following Stark docilely across the outer room and down the curving staircase into the darkened house.

Stark led them back down the path Steve had taken, and then across the foyer over to the kitchen area. There, he gently shoved Steve to one of the high stools and helped Peter sit on the counter.

Steve watched as Stark cleaned the blood off Peter’s face and hands, checked the back of his neck – there was a stunner wound there, Steve noticed absently – before turning to Steve.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to go to the local hospital, not with that healing wound,” Stark said softly.

Only then did Steve look down at his chest and realize the reason his chest ached so badly was because there was a laser-blade burn across it. Even as they spoke, Steve could see the wound starting to heal up. It wouldn’t heal over completely, he thought distantly. Laser-blades cauterized the wounds, removing any blood and tissue that could be pulled together to heal the scar. But the wound would become smaller, less tender, and the quickness of the response might even mean that new skin would grow over the burns and hide the scar completely.

“No,” Steve said, voice faint. “No, I… don’t. Stark, what – what happened?”

For a long moment, Stark just stared at Steve’s chest. Then he heaved a sigh and turned to Peter, curving an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “I – you know that I was kidnapped, a while back. Space pirates.”

Not sure what that had to do with anything, Steve nodded.

“Well, I – they weren’t space pirates. They were slavers. To this day I don’t know if they knew it was me when they boarded the ship, or if they were just hoping for someone rich for ransom. But my genius with technology is well-known. So they decided I’d make things for them. Do you know how you keep a slave, in space?”

That got through Steve’s numb state, and he shuddered, looking down at Stark’s chest with new understanding. Space slavers removed the hearts of their slaves, replacing it with a pump that only worked when the slave was within a certain radius of the key console. Each slave got their own console, their own shut-down code.

Stark’s mouth twisted bitterly. “Yeah, that’s what this is,” he said, tapping the light in his chest. “Normally, it looks prettier, but Obie – Obadiah – he removed the container that houses the heart-pump. But I’m a tech genius. I built this piece of memory, here,” and he tapped behind his ear, “and it disconnected the pump from the console. It also, for some reason – I’ve been working on replicating it, because it could help our pilots against superior space pilots – allows me to mentally access all electronic items within a certain radius. Obie had been pestering me about this new light, and finally I explained it… which led to explaining about the piece of machinery I invented to make certain the pump continued to work even though I wasn’t on the ship anymore. And so. Well. Apparently, the piece of machinery I invented was too much a temptation.” His words were bitter, now, and Peter let out a soft noise of fear, curling tightly into Tony’s side. “He decided that if I wasn’t going to replicate it for the company to mass-produce and profit off of it – and I’m not certain that just anyone should be given access to electronic machines, not with how much our world runs on them – he’d just take it from my head and have the engineers at SI reverse-engineer it. I don’t think he understands that I made this with scraps and snippets of hypothetical science that was held together more with a prayer than factual basis. Took the idea from dear old Dad, and the super-soldier project, actually.”

Steve froze, because – “You know about the super-soldier project?” he asked, voice stilted.

Stark seemed to realize that something about that upset Steve, because he paused. “Yes,” he answered, drawing the word out into three syllables. “I mean – it’s kinda hard not to know about it. My dad was the lead researcher on the project. I know there were other scientists, but it was his nanobot technology and his conception of the interaction of electrical synapses and emotional centers that allowed it to move past the theoretical stage.”

“So you know all about me.”

“I know some about you. Not everything. And I didn’t really know until, well.” Stark’s face twisted bitterly. “Obie dug up the info on you. Said he recognized you – which isn’t impossible, since he did work more closely with Dad than he ever worked with me. Was trying to convince me to let go of this ‘childish infatuation’ and marry as befitting my status.”

“I – I need to think. I need to—” Steve stood up, stumbling, and then Stark was there, lightly gripping at his elbow.

“You can’t go out looking like that,” Stark began, and Steve snarled, red flashing across his vision.

The rage disappeared as fast as it had appeared, but it terrified Steve and made Stark drop Steve’s elbow.

Steve turned and ran out of the room, out the doors, and down to the lake.

 

 

* * *

 

 

At the lake, he fell to his knees and cleaned himself up, giving up his shirt for good and hoping that the reddish stains on his jeans could be ignored for the most part. He had lost control around Stark. Around _Peter_ , god, Peter was just a kid and he could have _killed_ him. He’d almost lost control a second time. He should be put down, locked up. Why had the government let him go?

Well, they had thought that, away from the continuous treatment, the treatment they’d given him would die out. It’d go dormant, unable to be revived unless the catalyst was retaken by him. They assumed he was safe.

Space above, did this mean he could have snapped and killed Bucky at any point? Killed the kids in the library? Killed—

The noise of someone approaching made him freeze, wondering if he should throw himself in the lake – but no, he knew how to swim, and if someone saw him drowning they might try to save him. Instead he hunched his shoulders, curling his arms around his middle.

Next to him, Stark sat down and let out a long sigh. “I called Pepper and Rhodes. Fury. I knew that crafty bastard was the Empire’s way of keeping their eye on me. Literally. He hasn’t got two, after all.”

“How can you stand to be near me?” Steve whispered.

Stark let out a soft laugh. “I spent so much time chasing after you, Steve, that I’m not giving up now.”

The laugh infuriated Steve, and he pulled away from Stark. “It’s not _funny_ that I went berserk and killed three people, Stark!”

“Tony,” Stark corrected quietly. “Call me Tony.”

Steve gripped at his hair, tugging at it and pressing at his skull. “How – how can you stand to be _near_ me?”

“What you did was violent,” Stark – Tony – Stark said, voice suddenly fierce, “but it was no way near what I’ve seen. You were protecting me, Steve Rogers. You were protecting Peter. Do you know, when you launched yourself at the guard holding Peter, you kept Peter cradled to your chest and fought one handed until you could put him down? You’re not a beast, even if you think so.”

“I killed my last handler.” Steve’s voice broke. “I killed Peggy.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Stark – Tony – leaned his head against Steve’s shoulder. “I killed all the other slaves on the ship when I accidentally took control over the electronics on the ship. Interfered with the consoles that controlled their pumps, and boom.” His voice grew soft. “Watched my only friend there drop dead because what I made had unintended side-effects. So your hands are no bloodier than mine, Steve Rogers, and that’s not who you are. That’s not who I want a relationship with.”

“They’re the same person. I thought I had left that behind me but in that room… I’m not supposed to be dangerous anymore.” Steve swallowed hard, fighting back tears. “The Empire wouldn’t have let me walk away from the tests if I had still been dangerous.”

“Yeah, I don’t think Dad knew how permanent the effects would be, or the extent they’d grow. Like father, like son,” Stark – Tony – said, voice rough and angry.

They sat there for a long while. It was strange, to think that it was still daytime. To think even now, Bucky was at the garage, Coulson was at the library. Nat would be training new recruits. Clint would be at Aro Osborn’s tower, working there. Everything was continuing while Steve’s world was shaking apart.

“I need – I need space,” Steve said shakily. “I need – this is – I didn’t know I could still kill. I don’t know if I want to be out of the army, if I can – I can still kill. That easy.”

Tony – Stark – looked down at the water. “If you – Steve, I will tell you honestly, that no one will know this happened. It won’t be reported. I’ll protect you from the Empire. After all, I’m protecting myself. No one can know what my wetwire modifications can do. You’ll be safe. You don’t have to—”

“You might be okay with a killer, but I’m not,” Steve said harshly.

Stark flinched, and Steve immediately felt horrible for saying that. But before he could apologize, Stark was getting up, smiling a fake smile and walking away. “Well, you won’t be reported. If you want to turn yourself in, I can’t stop it. And I’ll leave you alone. You’ve made it – very clear.”

Steve watched Stark – _Tony_ – walk away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky immediately knew something was wrong when he came in the door and saw Steve huddled under a blanket, nude, his skin raw from scrubbing.

“Did – did someone hurt you?” Bucky gasped, kicking the door closed behind him and falling to his knees next to Steve. “Did someone – did you report it?”

Steve let out a sob, ashamed of his weakness but unable to stop himself from clinging to Bucky’s shirt. Bucky whispered soothing words, none of which Steve comprehended, until Steve’s crying jag was over and he was clutching at Bucky’s neck, face buried under Bucky’s jaw.

Sensing that it was over, Bucky smoothed a hand over Steve’s hair. “What happened, Steve?”

“I – I killed people, Bucky,” Steve croaked, voice shaking. “I – they were – I just went berserk, oh scragg, just like last time, Bucky, I shouldn’t be allowed to – I keep seeing their blood—”

“Did you kill Stark?” Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head negatively.

“Did you kill an aristo?”

Steve started to shake his head no, and then remembered Stane. Tiredly, he nodded his head.

“Alright.” Bucky took a deep breath and continued, “Alright. There’s less of an Imperial presence in mid-continent; I can have everything of essentials packed and ready to go. If it was just commoners, we’d have a bit more time to pack everything, but aristos take attacks on their class very seriously; we need to get moving. I’m going to leave a coded message to Nat, leave messages at the library and the garage—”

Confused, Steve lifted his head, head swimming and a headache pounding at his temples. “Bucky, what are you talking about?”

“We’ve got to get you out of here. The Imperials will take you and hang you for killing an aristo,” Bucky said. “I know you’re probably in shock, but we need to get moving—”

“I said I _killed_ people, Bucky, how can you be – be planning to _hide_ me?” Steve asked, incredulous and shocked and terrified at the depths of Bucky’s loyalty.

Bucky gave Steve a hard stare. “Steve, you would only kill someone who deserved it.”

“ _I killed Peggy!_ ” Steve shouted out, voice collapsing into a dry sob, and he curled up tighter in the blanket. “I killed Pe—”

“That wasn’t your fault, Steve, someone was scragging using her as a scragging _shield_. No, if you killed someone we’ve got to get you out of here—”

“Ton – Stark said he wasn’t going to report it.”

Bucky paused in the middle of his packing and gave Steve a hard look. “I think,” he said slowly and carefully, “you need to start from the beginning.”

With much reluctance and coaxing on Bucky’s part, Steve unloaded the whole story, unable to meet the disappointment he knew must be in Bucky’s eyes. Finally, when he had fallen silence and it had stretched out for a long moment, he chanced looking up.

Bucky was glowering at him. “You are a scum-sucking idiot, do you realize that? It was a scummer _defensive_ killing! Scragg it, the Empire would give you a _medal_ for protecting Stark!”

“But I _killed_ someone – multiple someones – I could have killed Stark or Peter – I killed in front of a _child_ —”

“The minute you start thinking it’s okay is the minute I’d turn you in myself,” Bucky said flatly. “That being said – I’ve killed people before. Many people. Yeah, some of them were our enemies – but sometimes they weren’t. I’m not saying it’s okay because I did it – but you wouldn’t want the Empire to hang me because of equipment failure, or stray spacefire, would you?”

Tiredly, Steve shook his head no.

“Right. I think we both need to get drunk. And then you need to tell me why Stark’s not the one comforting you.”

“I finally drove him off,” Steve whispered. “I didn’t – mean to. I just need space – I just—”

Bucky considered him a long moment and then sighed. “Alright, we’ll fix it in the morning. You have an evening shift tomorrow, right?”

“How can I even go into _work_ —” Steve began.

“Because, and I will keep scragging repeating this, _no one will blame you for what you did_. Yes, you’ll have nightmares. What do you think I have every night? But it’s not your fault. We’ll sign you up for some soul-healing, okay? We’ll do that. Tomorrow. We’ll fix everything tomorrow. Right now, let’s just get drunk.

Late that night, after imbibing far more alcohol than was normally possible, Steve was curled up in the corner of his room, trying not to remember the way he’d torn flesh with teeth and fingernails, the way he’d brutally tore joints apart and dismembered the bodies. He shook and trembled, until a small flash of light from his bedside appeared.

A scum-sucking message.

Steve wanted to take his reader and smash it against the wall. Picking it up to do just that, he realized the message was, from all people, Coulson.

_< I hope to see you at work tomorrow. Pepper and Peter miss you.>_

 

* * *

 

 

Steve walked into the library, and immediately was tackled by Peter, the tiny child clinging to Steve’s legs. Gently, Steve lifted Peter up and looked to see Pepper, white and teary-eyed, standing behind the desk.

“Thank you, Steve,” she whispered. “Thank you, for saving them.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

That wasn’t the end of it, not by a long shot. Steve didn’t think himself safe, and it was a cancer that ate at him. But no security forces came banging on his door, no one treated him differently. Come to think of it, Fury even treated him with more respect. Coulson seemed to understand something had happened – how much he knew, Steve didn’t know – and made certain to make Steve’s duties light for the next few days, slowly increasing his load back to normal standards.

Still, a ten-day from the incident without any contact from Stark at all, Steve closed up the library at midnight and instead of turning home, turned to the local bar. Logan’s, it was called, and run by an ornery man with the same name and a quick-tongued shyster by the name of Remy. It wasn’t Steve’s normal haunt, though he’d taken Clint and Bucky here once, one time when Clint had visited, so he knew them superficially.

“Well, well, our resident hero,” Logan grunted when Steve came in. “Let me get you set up with something strong, I’m guessing?”

Steve nodded silently.

Being that late at night, there was a crowd, but in one of the lulls, and after Steve’s fourth or fifth drink – he’d lost count – he looked up to see Remy sitting down across from him.

“What d’ya want?” Steve asked, voice hoarse.

“I’m just worried. You know, of course, that we’ve kind of adopted Stark, here. He’s done a lot for us, and he’s one of the few aristos that’s down to earth. Well.” Remy grinned, that quicksilver grin that managed to drag an answering grin from Steve, albeit a tiny one. “Down to earth is a relative term, isn’t it? But we’re thankful. We’ve been helping Peter through this, and Pepper. But who’s helping you?”

“I chased Stark away,” Steve blurted out.

That was entirely _not_ what he had intended to say, and his eyes flew wide, but Remy let out a soft sigh. “Ah. That explains this, then. Well, then perhaps it is time for you to do some chasing?”

“Who says he even wants me anymore?” Steve muttered. “I – I don’t like knowing that about myself.”

Remy’s eyes grew dark. “No one is happy facing the darkness in their hearts. Most people never have to face it,” he said quietly. “Some have to face it because it’s so close to the surface of the skin. And others are forced to face it, because they are put into bad situations.” His eyes traveled over to the bar, where Logan was pouring refills for someone. “But everyone can do what you have done. _Anyone_. Pushed as you were, they could. You protected people who were dear to you, and that, mon ami, is something you should never be ashamed of. I’m willing to bet Stark will look past that. The question, then, is whether you can accept that darkness in you, or if you’ll let it drown you.”

Standing up, Remy picked up his cup. “I think you’ve drunk enough, Steve,” he said gently. “Now might be the time to make a decision.”

Steve watched him go for a moment, watched him go behind the bar and murmur something to Logan, their pose portraying intimacy and familiarity. And Steve made a decision.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Stark’s workshop was lit, Stark – _Tony_ – in the center, hands twisted up in wires, a spanner in his teeth and his eyes focused on the holograph screen in front of him. Steve stood there a moment, itching to draw the scene, to capture it somehow. This is what Tony was – not some aloof aristo, but someone with stained nails and dry wit, with huge eccentricities he could indulge in and a huger heart. This was someone that Steve was willing to take a second chance with.

Steve took a step forward, kicking lightly at the nearest table to rattle the pieces there. The noise was enough to draw Tony’s attention, and he turned, eyes going wide when he saw Steve standing there, and he spat the spanner to the side before looking back at Steve.

“What – why are you here?” Tony asked, hope badly hidden in his voice.

Steve cleared his throat and started with the most important thing, first – because if he didn’t get this out first, he’d get distracted and forget to, later. “I – I wanted to apologize, for what I said. It was – cruel.”

Tony swallowed hard, eyes shuttering. “Oh. Well. I’ve forgotten it already. Don’t worry about it. Thank you for coming out – space-scum, Steve, it’s oh-one hundred! What are you doing here this late?”

Steve took a careful step forward, leaned close, and pressed a tentative kiss against Tony’s lips before stepping back, waiting nervously.

Tony licked his lips, staring at Steve a long moment. “Be very, very sure, Steve. I don’t like letting go. I’m horrible. I talk too much and I’ll drive you insane and I need to take a bigger role in my company now that Stane’s gone and I want you so, so much.”

“That’s fine by me,” Steve said calmly.

Tony let out a growl and dumped the electrical equipment to the side before launching himself at Steve. With a gasp, Steve’s arms reflexively caught Tony’s form, but Tony was almost as tall as Steve, and Steve hadn’t been expecting it. He found himself toppling over, hitting his tailbone uncomfortably, and he winced—

“Not my most graceful, I assure you, but it can be so, so much better,” Tony panted against Steve’s lips, licking and nipping, clever hands delving under Steve’s shirt and sliding up Steve’s chest. With a muffled groan, Steve bucked, hardening in his pants as Tony’s groin rubbed against his own. His hands came up to cradle the back of Tony’s head and the small of Tony’s back, holding him still.

They kissed like a battle, like they would die for lack of the other, and rutted against each other like adolescents, unable to do more than focus on their completion to the exclusion of all else, and when Steve came, he saw stars behind his eyes. Tony took a little while longer, gasping and whispering Steve’s name like a prayer over and over again, eyes growing dazed and unfocused as shudders ran up his frame, and Steve moved his hand from Tony’s head to Tony’s cock, cupping it through Tony’s sweatpants.

Tony’s back bowed and he came with a shout.

They lay there in the bright lights of the workshop, dazed, sticky with sweat and cum, sloppily pawing and kissing at one another.

“You know,” Tony muttered, voice twisting up to a whine when Steve bit at his top of his ear and then soothed it with his tongue, “I have a perfectly good couch just a few feet away.”

Smiling, eager, and completely in love, Steve pulled back with a smile. “Well, then, why are we here?”

**Author's Note:**

> Terminology
> 
> Comm unit: like a telephone, but built like a watch, located on the wrist most of the time  
> Crafts: all are circular/oval/rounded-triangluar vehicles that hover off the ground  
> \--heavy: built to carry a lot of items; used for moving, hauling, like trucks  
> \--ferry: equivalent to buses; carry people to their jobs, etc.  
> \--rental: just like rental cars  
> Hover-lot: lot built specific for crafts to rest in; crafts rest in docking bays.  
> Tube: like a bullet train, used in very big cities to ferry people fast from one end to another  
> Imperial: there are only two nations on earth – the Empire and the Sultanate nation. The Empire controls the continents of Asia (the northern and Eastern part), North America, South America, and Australia.  
> \--Army: grunt soldiers  
> \--Pilot Corps: space pilots  
> Gates: portals set into the walls to allow people and shipments in and out of the city – bigger cities have more Gates.  
> Walls: the lead-plated walls that support the radiation shielding for each city.  
> Track: akin to a major or a field of study.  
> Black Widows: once the assassins for the Empire; genetically modified. Have higher than average speed, strength, and reflexes, and are a small culture within themselves. Feared by most of the common population.  
> Rest-day: days off from work.  
> Ten-day: instead of a seven day week, there are ten days in a week, 36 weeks in a year, and the extra five are a holiday celebrating the new year.  
> Bio-interface: mechanical limbs and organs built to replace lost organs or limbs.  
> Cohort: group of children all born in the same year. They share the same classes and know at least superficially everyone born in their year.  
> \--ward: a ward cohort is a cohort of orphans or abandoned children (wards of the local government)  
> \--district: in large cities, districts are created. Cohorts would be too big otherwise.  
> \--communal: in small cities, all children born in the same year are placed in the same cohort.  
> Sentinels: special police force designed to keep order among the lower levels of big cities.  
> Data chip: equivalent to a book – placing a data chip within a console will bring up all knowledge stored on the chip.  
> Reader: akin to a palm computer.  
> Flexisheet: like a slate, a flexisheet is a flexible sheet of plastic designed to allow for notes to be jotted down on it with a stylus and then wiped clean.  
> Ace-mode: slang, meaning “cool”  
> Edge: the very outskirts of the city. Less common in big cities.  
> Mixers: clubs.  
> Tainment-plex: an entertainment complex.  
> APOCH: a disease that attacks the neurons and accelerates the aging process; no known cure or cause.  
> Titles  
> \--Sir: respectful title for a male-identifying commoner.  
> \--Mam: respectful title for a female-identifying commoner.  
> \--Zhu: the most standard title; all commoners are called Zhu until their preferred title is given.  
> \--Aro: respectful title for male-identifying aristo.  
> \--Ara: respectful title for female-identifying aristo.  
> \--Arzu: the most standard title; all aristos are called Arzu until their preferred title is given.


End file.
